
Class !^-0 VL_ 

Book _>_Ha1. 



Copyright I^^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Liberty and a Living 

The Record of an Attempt to Secure 

Bread and Butter, Sunshine and 

Content, by Gardening 

Fishing, and Hunting 



BY 



^^ 



Philip G. Hubert, Jr. 



" That I may accomplish some petty, particular affair well, 
I live my whole life coarsely. Yet the man who does not 
betake himself at once and desperately to sawing is called 
a loafer, though he may be knocking at the door of heaven 
all the while, which shall surely be opened to him. I can see 
nothing so holy as unrelaxed play and frolic in this bower 
God has built for us." — H. D. Thoreau. 

"The royal peace of a rural home."— W. S. Ward. 



SccimU Ed'iti(Vi;.^l>h; Ne-x 'fire/ict 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

XTbe Iknlcketbockec press 

1904 



Hs^ 



UBRaHV of CONG(»ESS 
Tvy* CaplM Reoaived 

FEB 29 1904 

cuss *- XX6. No. 



•ull 



Copyright, i88q, bv 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



Copyright, 1903, by 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

Published, January, 1904 



Zbe ftnJcfeeibocfccr piees, 'Kew IPorb 



PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION 

Liberty and a Living was first published 
nearly fifteen years ago. It is hardly neces- 
sary to say that during these years its sale has 
not been such as to warrant the belief that the 
world had received this "gospel of idleness," 
as one of my critics called it, with anything 
like enthusiasm. Nevertheless, that the little 
book has been read by a good many interested 
people is shown in the several hundred letters 
that have reached me from Maine to California 
commending my courage, deploring my in- 
sanity, pitying my wife and children, or asking 
advice. I have been denounced as an immoral 
person who held up a mirage as the goal toward 
which men should strive. It has been predicted 
that I might have many letters from those 
weak-minded enough to follow my advice, but 
that they would be dated from this or that 
county poor-house and would all begin : " We 



iv Preface 

have tried your plan and — here we are." 
Other correspondents have advised me to wait 
a few years and then acknowledge my folly. 
Well, I have waited fifteen years without 
meeting any criticism that I consider destruc- 
tive of the main thesis of the book- — namely, 
that thousands of people pay too much for 
their money, and that it is possible to make a 
small income go much further in the purchase 
of peace, culture, sunshine, and happiness than 
is commonly thought possible. But I must 
repeat that the scheme of life outlined in 
Liberty and a Living is not for every one ; it 
presupposes an uncommon capacity for enjoy- 
ment in nature, books, and very simple living. 
The problem is complicated by the question : 
What is best for the children? Good schools 
are expensive, and perhaps the best that a 
father can do for his children at home falls 
short of school training. 

To my many correspondents I have a word 
of apology to offer. I could not answer all 
their letters, many of them long and kindly, 
and so I made it a rule to answer none. To 
answer them all would be seriously to curtail 



Preface v 

my liberty and — stamps for a reply being the 
exception — to take away some of my living. 
I would also add a word of warning: Don't 
take the book too literally. If you are willing 
to sacrifice much for the sake of fresh air and 
the release from the treadmill, accept these 
notes, from one who has tried the simpler life, 
as random suggestions, — nothing more. 



P. G. H.. Jr. 



New York, October, 1903. 







CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. — The Problem to be Solved . . i 
II. — A Rich Poor Man and a Poor 

Rich One 7 

III. — Some Experiments in Living on 

Next to Nothing a Year . . 18 

IV. — The Sort of Life we Lead . . 28 

V. — What my Critics will Say . . 43 

VI. — Home ...... 54 

VII. — Details and Dollars — My Garden 70 

VIII. — With Fish-Lines and Nets . . 96 

IX. — We Go a-Fishing . . . .112 

X. — My Bees ...... 135 

XL — " Dead Trees Love the Fire " . 153 
XII. — The Life Worth Living — Henry 

David Thoreau . . . -171 

XIII. — What we Lose and What we Gain 200 
XIV. — The Dangers of Cutting Loose 

from Town Drudgery . . 241 







■■W^}^^^ V^VV J*S, ..v^ 



LIBERTY AND A LIVING 



THE PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED 

IT may be well to say at the outset that by 
the word liberty I do not mean idleness, 
the two having no connection in my mind. 
By liberty and a living, as contrasted with 
work and a living, I mean the getting of bread 
and butter, clothes and shelter for my little 
ones and myself by the exercise of common 
skill in gardening, fishing, shooting, and other 
out-door sports. This entails no anxious work, 
no tedious grind of routine in dusty towns 
and musty offices. It is life in the sunshine. 
It gives bread and butter, and contentment, 
if not fortune. It offers health and oppor- 
tunities for intellectual recreation beyond the 

reach of most men under our present system. 

I 

I 



2 The Problem to be Solved 

Life, to the average man, means hard, anx- 
ious work, with disappointment at the end, 
whereas it ought to mean pleasant work, with 
plenty of time for books and talk. There is 
something wrong about a system which con- 
demns ninety-nine hundredths of the race to 
an existence as bare of intellectual activity and 
enjoyment as that of a horse, and with the 
added anxiety concerning the next month's 
rent. Is there no escape? Throughout years 
of hard toil I suspected that there might be 
such an escape. Now, having escaped, 1 am 
sure of it. So long as I can get a house and 
garden for three dollars a week, so long as 
oatmeal is less than three cents a pound, so 
long as the fish bite and the cabbages grow, I 
shall keep out of the slavery of modern city 
existence, I shall live in God's sunshine and 
enjoy my children's prattle, my books and 
papers. 

For a good many years I worked hard at 
newspaper correspondence and miscellaneous 
writing without doing more than keep my 
family in the most modest way of life. I went 
to my desk early and remained late. Year 



The Problem to be Solved 3 

after year I dreamed of the day when my bank 
account should be large enough to allow me at 
least a few months for that out-door work and 
sport I love so well ; yet the day of rest seemed 
to grow more distant rather than nearer. 
Gradually this idea took possession of me : 
Why is it not possible for a healthy man, yet 
strong and in the enjoyment of youth, to make 
bread and butter for his little ones and himself 
without chaining himself down to a life of 
drudgery, without passing most of his time 
away from those he loves, without devoting 
his life to work which is drudgery, which is 
hard, which tells upon a man's vitality day 
by day? What am I good for? At what 
work which does not require a daily routine 
in a city ofifice can I make enough money 
for our simple life? By degrees these ques- 
tions began to assume a personal importance. 
Was it possible that I, with my horror of the 
city, its bustling monotony, its petty con- 
cern for inanities, could find work which would 
offer me freedom and bread and butter? I 
wanted no work which would keep me in- 
doors from the beginning of April to the end 



4 The Problem to be Solved 

of December, no work which would every day 
compel me to say good-bye to my children in 
the early morning. Of course such a life must 
be found in the country, if anywhere, and in 
country occupations. To some people this 
might mean in itself misery. To me, with my 
love of sunshine, it is otherwise. During the 
years when I was tied to a desk from morning 
till night, the very sight of the agricultural 
papers among my exchanges, even in the dead 
of winter, was sufficient to make me feel like 
throwing business overboard and getting into 
country life, even if nothing better than po- 
tato-raising presented itself. At the same time 
that I thought and talked about the miseries 
of city life I was by no means blind to the 
dangers of the country. 

Any attempt to cut loose from city life in 
summer might result in the city cutting loose 
from me in winter. Where, then, would be 
my music, my opera, my theatres, my lectures? 
As a newspaper man I had become accustomed 
to all these things as a part of existence. As 
I had lived for years in the heart of the con- 
tinent's life, the quiet of a country winter 



The Problem to be Solved 5 

might pall upon me, and when the papers 
brought me news of great events in the world 
of art I might feel that I was losing more than 
I had gained. And my friends and acquaint- 
ances were not slow in pointing out to me that 
even if I worked hard and intelligently as a 
farmer I could not be sure of making a com- 
fortable living; and their picture of a farmer's 
life made much of early rising, long hours of 
work, bodily exhaustion, an unceasing battle 
with Nature, and a gradual relapse, intellec- 
tually, to the level of other farmers — good 
men, perhaps, but dull-witted in all matters 
not connected with crops and stock. My 
friends predicted that a year or two of farming 
would result either in the loss of all interest in 
literature, science, and art, or I would become 
heartily sick of country life and eager to get 
back to town at any cost. I would find, they 
said, that books and magazines lost their in- 
terest after a day's work in the fields; that 
gradually there would be less talk about art and 
music, and more about corn and calves. The 
life of hard physical labor would end in blunt- 
ing the intellectual perceptions. I recognize 



6 The Problem to be Solved 

perfectly the existence of such dangers, and 
that is one reason why I should no more 
think of ordinary farm life for myself than I 
should undertake to compete with an Irish 
laborer in the raising of potatoes for market. 
The question resolved itself into this : Is there 
an occupation, or are there occupations, in 
which a fairly intelligent man, willing to work, 
can make a living in the country without re- 
sorting to the exhausting labor of the farm, 
for which he is physically unfitted? I deter- 
mined to make experiments. 



— ,-yji^ 




A RICH POOR MAN AND A POOR 
RICH ONE 

YESTERDAY one of my neighbors died, 
killed by an accident. A rich man who, 
in the eyes of the world, or of that little bit of 
it in which we move, had attained everything 
that man could wish for. Beginning life a 
poor boy, he made a large fortune by dealing 
in lard. He was looked up to in the lard 
trade; his judgment upon lard was final. A 
religious man in the hackneyed sense of the 
word, he had done much for the sect to which 
he belonged, and was cited as a model layman. 
He gave large sums to churches and church 
colleges, and contributed to the fund for send- 
ing missionaries to foreign parts. As a family 
man, as a husband and father, he was, for all 
that I know, an exemplary person. I never 
knew him to smile ; but severity of expression 
may have been constitutional. With his large 
7 



8 A Rich Poor Man 

wealth he built himself a pleasant though com- 
monplace home, the house surrounded by large 
grounds, in which a dozen gardeners were kept 
busy. When not too tired, it was his practice 
to stroll through his grounds and garden in the 
cool of the evening. But his attachment to 
his country home in New Jersey was not such 
as to keep him from going to the city every 
day in the year except Sundays and legal holi- 
days ; it was his boast that he never took a 
vacation, poor man. At half-past seven in the 
morning his carriage took him to the station, 
and at six o'clock in the evening it took him 
home again. He was a bank director never 
known to miss a board meeting; and when he 
died the directors of his bank had resolutions 
printed in several newspapers deploring the 
loss which the institution had suffered. "He 
died in harness," said one of his fellow-directors 
to the reporter of a newspaper, "a representa- 
tive American business man. His knowledge 
of the lard market was wonderful; he could 
give you off-hand the day's quotations in lard 
for Chicago, Buenos Ayres, London, Paris, 
and Timbuctoo." A man without an idea be- 



And a Poor Rich One 9 

yond lard and discounts, he was an important 
figure in the community. Books, art, music, 
were nothing to him; and if a man's name 
was not a good one to have upon the back of 
a note, that man was not much to him either. 
The other day his coachman allowed the reins 
to slip, the horses ran away, and the rich man, 
in trying to get out, was killed. 

My personal acquaintance with my rich 
neighbor was but slight, and of a business 
character. One June morning, when all Na- 
ture was rejoicing, it became my duty to look 
into some complaints made by citizens as to 
stenches supposed to come from the neighbor- 
hood of the Hudson River at a point where 
several slaughter- and rendering-houses were 
situated in violation of public health and de- 
cency. I remember particularly that it had 
been hard work for me, young and strong, 
fond of out-door work in the sunlight, to leave 
my pretty Jersey home that morning, to tear 
myself away from my garden, with its straw- 
berries in bloom, from the river, upon which 
my little boat nodded an invitation to sail; to 
leave my children, clamorous for a day in the 



lo A Rich Poor Man 

woods or on the water. But duty in the shape 
of an investigation into these evil smells took 
me to the station, confined me for nearly an 
hour in a hot railroad car along with some 
hundreds of other unfortunates, and sent me 
to an unpleasant part of the city. It happened 
that my rich neighbor was interested in prop- 
erty in that neighborhood ; his firm bought 
the refuse of the slaughter-houses, in order 
to transform it into good lard. Naturally, I 
asked him as to the origin of the complaints. 
He knew nothing of their origin, but he was 
quite sure that certain rendering-establishments 
with which he did business were not to blame ; 
and, to prove it, he proposed to take me over 
them and show me what nice places they were. 
I agreed. When within a block of the accused 
establishments, the stench borne on the wind 
was sickening. My neighbor thought nothing 
of it ; he went there every morning, and was 
accustomed to it. Having reached some ren- 
dering-cellars beneath the slaughter-houses, 
my neighbor pointed out how cleanly every- 
thing was managed : the fat and refuse, fresh 
and nice, was dropped directly from the abat- 



And a Poor Rich One n 

toir into great steam vats, in which it was 
melted. My neighbor assured me that such 
was the care taken with everything that he 
himself never missed making a morning visit 
there. Standing in half an inch of fatty mud 
and water, he surveyed the scene with a pleased 
air, and asked me whether I smelt anything 
except the natural odors of a rendering-house. 
Many times since then, when fortunate 
enough to steal away from business for a few 
days, and able to sail about in my boat and 
teach the children how to fish, I have thought 
of my highly respected neighbor, and won- 
dered whether he still paid his daily visits to 
that horrible place. From what I know of his 
doings I am pretty sure that he did. "He 
died in harness, like a true American," said 
his fellow bank directors. Very often, as I 
trudged home from the river in the bright 
September and October evenings, my little 
ones strong with a whole day's water sport, 
and all of us full of the day's joy, my rich 
neighbor would be driven quickly by on his 
way from the railroad station. Probably he 
had made hundreds of dollars that day, while 



12 A Rich Poor Man 

I had made — what? Had he paid too much 
for his money? 

I have another neighbor, by no means a rich 
man, and by no means looked up to in the com- 
munity, — in fact, scarcely known, except to 
the few who meet him out fishing, or who buy 
crabs and oysters from him. He is a jolly old 
negro, a man of sixty years of age, something 
of a philosopher, with the resources of a 
Yankee and the irresponsibility of a tramp. 
With his wife and children he leads the life of 
fisherman and gardener. His nets give him all 
the fish he needs and to sell ; his garden patch 
supplies him with vegetables for the year; in 
summer he is his own master, refusing per- 
sistently to work for others; in winter he 
works for others if work presents itself, but as 
the pork barrel is deep and vegetables plenty, 
his actual need of money is small. Oysters 
he can have for the getting. This man has a 
genuine love of the sunlight and of untainted 
air. When I sail him a race for home, and we 
arrive wet with the spray which the breeze has 
thrown at us, he is the first to proclaim his keen 
enjoyment. He has never known what the 



And a Poor Rich One 13 

heat and dust of a city mean ; nevertheless, he 
values his life almost as much as I did my brief 
vacations. Something also of a naturalist in 
his way, he does not disdain to carry home 
with him such queer sea products as may inter- 
est him or his grandchildren. Spending almost 
no money, his income is actually larger than 
his expenses, and he is able to pay a small life 
insurance, and to put by something for the day 
when oysters may be scarce, or rheumatism 
may get the best of him. For forty years he 
has been following this life. He is not a popu- 
lar man with his fellow-watermen, because ab- 
solutely indifferent to the attractions of the 
village grog-shop, and more fond of his family 
than of gossip. His days are given to his gar- 
den and his fishing; his evenings to the study 
of our county agricultural journal, which gives 
him, in condensed form, the news of the world, 
as well as the latest directions as to planting 
onions. 

Thinking about my neighbor who died 
the other day, and my other neighbor who 
still lives to catch fish and enjoy the sea 
breezes, I can scarcely repress the desire to 



14 A Rich Poor Man 

sympathize deeply with the one who got so lit- 
tle out of life. I know that such sympathy 
would be received by his friends and fellow 
bank directors with amazement. Was he not 
rich and respected? Did he not die in harness? 
What more can a man want? And if I timidly 
suggest that there is a joy about lobster catch- 
ing in an October breeze, or even in' oystering 
in December, far beyond the pleasure of mak- 
ing money out of lard, some eminently re- 
spectable people I know will doubt my sanity. 
Take two men, one of whom follows the life of 
my late respected and rich neighbor, making 
existence one long strain for money, and finally 
dying in ignorance of everything but the price 
of lard in Chicago, Buenos Ayres, London, 
Paris, and Timbuctoo ; on the other hand, take 
my poor neighbor, who, when he comes to die, 
will not even be mentioned by the newspapers, 
whose name no bank director ever saw on the 
back of a note, who knew nothing about the 
price of lard except at the corner grocery, but 
who enjoyed fifty years of sport, of gardening, 
of fishing, and of out-door happiness. Which 
of these two men got the most out of life? 



And a Poor Rich One 15 

Does the knowledge of the price of lard, or 
an obituary notice in the newspapers, or the 
esteem of Tom, Dick, and Harry atone for the 
loss of all sport? Does the man who makes a 
fortune accomplish so much for the world that 
his own happiness or ease should not be allowed 
to weigh in the balance? Civilization tends to 
the importance of the individual. The middle 
ages saw thousands compelled to labor for one 
lord and master; to-day each man is considered 
as entitled to some share of the good things in 
the world, and even women and children are 
coming forward. In the distant future each 
man will consider that the day is made for him, 
and that he who fails to enjoy himself — that is, 
to use the gifts of nature rationally — is a fool. 
Civilization should mean emancipation from 
drudgery, and unquestionably man will some 
day cease to labor in the present meaning of the 
word. When machinery attains to such per- 
fection that the ground is ploughed, the seed 
is sown, the crops are tended, watered, gathered 
without the work of man ; when power, light, 
heat, are so cheap as to be as free as air 
to every one, actual labor to provide food, 



1 6 A Rich Poor Man 

raiment, and shelter need be but slight. At 
present we put a fictitious value upon labor as 
a moral exercise apart from results. One hun- 
dred years ago our Puritan ancestors doomed 
here and hereafter the man who held to any 
but the most dreary and dreadful beliefs ; sun- 
light, moral as well as physical, to them partook 
more or less of the nature of sin. To-day we 
are in danger of erring similarly with regard to 
work. One fetish is taking the place of an- 
other. I deny that the man who prefers his 
lobster boat to the banker's desk, who would 
rather know the habits of the clam than the 
price of lard in Chicago, New York, and those 
other places, is in danger of deterioration, or 
that his example is vicious. Let all the world 
follow your advice, say the wiseacres, and we 
should drift back to savagery. 

That eminent financier, Mr. Jay Gould, is 
said to have remarked, in a fit of depression, 
or perhaps in an attempt to discourage envy of 
his millions, that his money gave him nothing 
more than some clothes to wear, a house to 
live in, and some little luxuries. Some of my 
critics will undoubtedly exclaim: "Look at 



And a Poor Rich One 



17 



Gould. Does he not enjoy the sea breeze in 
his yacht, and all the pleasures of nature?" 
Perhaps he does, in a difficult sort of way, 
filtered through flunkeys, so to speak. But of 
the young men who are tempted to keep their 
noses at the gilded grindstone, how many will 
attain to the dignity of a yacht? How many 
will die in harness long before they think it 
possible to stop work and begin to play? How 
many will lose all capacity for the enjoyment 
of life before their pile of gold is big enough? 




SOME EXPERIMENTS IN LIVING ON 
NEXT TO NOTHING A YEAR 

ONE of the great features of most of the 
books in favor of living upon nothing in 
the country consists in the table of expenses, 
showing at the end of the month, or quarter, 
or year, where every penny has gone. I have 
quite a collection of such books, beginning 
with Ten Acres Enough, and ending with a 
little volume, issued within the last year, de- 
scribing how a lady managed to live in comfort 
and even pay rent upon an income of $150 a 
year. After much consideration and the prep- 
aration of many tables of the kind, showing the 
expenditure from day to day, from week to 
week, and month to month, I confess that I do 
not see how such tables as I can give will help 
any person who wishes to make the experi- 
ment. It is too much a matter of what people 
consider the necessaries of life. Mr. Roose- 
18 



Nothing a Year 19 

velt, in criticising Ten Acres Enough, says that 
Mr. Morris, the author of that famous book, 
must have allowed his wife and daughters to 
go naked for more than five years, because, in 
his account of expenditure at the end of the 
book, not a word is said as to the cost of 
clothes; which leads me to say that while I 
might consider myself perfectly happy with 
$20 worth of clothes a year, another man might 
think it necessary to spend $ioo, and his wife 
three times that amount. I like to wear a 
flannel shirt of a rough kind nearly all the year 
round, and although the fashion is growing, 
some excellent people still consider the flannel 
shirt a badge of social degradation. My chil- 
dren are dressed in the coarsest and plainest 
fashion, far too coarse and too plain for most 
city people to think proper. I work my own 
garden ; I sail my own boat ; I rake my own 
oysters ; all of which work many men I know 
would consider beneath them. They have no 
more taste for such work than for the class of 
books with which I occupy my evenings. My 
house is plain, and the living plainer. I in- 
finitely prefer that the dinner shall be of one 



20 Living on Next to 

course, and the talk of music, books, and art, 
than that there should be ten courses, together 
with inane twaddle. I once knew a family in 
which there were many children, where the 
cardinal rule at meals was that nothing must be 
said about the food upon the table, about the 
petty concerns of the house and garden, or of 
the people in the neighborhood. So far as 
possible the conversation was to be directed to 
some book in hand at the time, or some matter 
of public interest of the day. If the children 
were too young to take part in such talk, they 
were to say nothing. Of course there is a 
ridiculous side to any such scheme, and reminis- 
cences of Doctor Blimber, with his maddening 
"The Romans, Mr. Feeder," will occur to 
most people. Nevertheless, there are good 
points about such a practice, even if it now 
and then leads to absurdity. If we adults are 
talking of woman suffrage, when Arthur, aged 
six years, interrupts with the remark that his 
goat swallowed a tennis-ball that morning, the 
conversation may not be so consecutive as it 
might be ; nevertheless, it is far better to have 
woman suffrage up for debate than the quality 



Nothing a Year 21 

of the corned-beef or the potatoes, or the cut of 
Mrs. 's new dress. I have found by ex- 
perience that systematic effort is essential in 
order to begin any such reform as this. As I 
shall have occasion to say elsewhere, without 
some effort, the evening, after a long day out- 
doors in the wind and on the water or in the 
woods, will prove a drowsy and unprofitable 
one. A few weeks' earnest determination not 
to let one evening pass without the reading 
aloud of some magazine article, or of a certain 
number of pages of some book worth reading, 
will result in permanent enjoyment; the sense 
of exertion will disappear. There is a good 
deal to be said in favor of the life of routine in 
which every hour is laid out. 

To return to the tables of expense again, 
some people might think that our bill of fare 
for breakfast, lunch, and dinner meant semi- 
starvation. We have been educated to like 
oatmeal, for instance, and breakfast seldom 
varies from oatmeal, bread and butter, coffee, 
and eggs. For lunch there is sometimes fish 
or oysters, or fruit, or a bit of cold meat. And 
for dinner we have fish or meat, plenty of 



2 2 Living on Next to 

vegetables, and, almost invariably, fruit or the 
simplest kind of pudding. I know that such 
a bill of fare would not please many people. 
It is low living, at all events, if not high think- 
ing. Probably books and magazines cost us as 
much as our dinners throughout the summer. 
Nevertheless, I have made out this little table, 
compiled from the expense accounts kept with 
scrupulous care for the eight months beginning 
with the first of May and ending with the first 
of January : 

Rent (for the whole year) ..... $i6o oo 

Wages ......... lOO oo 

Grocer's and butcher's bill . . . . . 128 oo 

Expenses upon garden, boat, house, including 

tools, paint, repairs, seeds, etc. . . . 35 00 

Coal and wood . . . . . . . 25 00 

Total $448 00 

This shows a total of $448, or an average of 
$56 per month. To offset this sum, I have 
only to show, as coming from the place, the in- 
significant sum of $43, made up by sending 
surplus eggs to the grocer's, and giving what 
vegetables and hay I did not need to a neigh- 
bor. There is also a small sum to be credited 



Nothing a Year 23 

to my bees. Taking the expenses of the sum- 
mer, therefore, and counting the summer at 
eight months of the year, and leaving out the 
money which went for clothes, books, etc., and 
small extras, we have an outgo of $50 a month. 
To me the life is delightful. Having $50 a 
month from sources outside, there is no anxiety. 
I am not at all sure that even were my $50 a 
month income suddenly cut off I should not 
attempt to make that amount by doubling or 
quadrupling the size of my garden and going 
into raising small fruits, chickens for market, 
etc., perhaps living a little more simply than 
we do now, simple as this life is. 

Here I can see that my sympathetic reader, 
the man or woman tired of paying out to the 
landlord, the butcher, and the grocer every 
penny that comes in, tired of seeing the chil- 
dren weak and puny, and anxious for a more 
wholesome life than the city affords, is still dis- 
satisfied. "Where," he exclaims, "even if I 
have enough capital to realize an income of 
$600 a year necessary for this country life, am 
I to get amusement? I must go to the city for 
a few months in winter in order to hear a little 



24 Living on Next to 



music, to see a few good plays, to see the 
world, to hear the buzz of life ; my children 
must go to school; they cannot grow up fisher- 
men or market-gardeners." This is a serious 
part of the problem and cannot be ignored. In 
my own case it happens that I can go to the 
city for a few months in the depth of winter 
and make enough money to pay my way during 
those months, going back to my country life 
when the spring opens. Nevertheless, after a 
fair trial of several years of this kind of life, 
much country, and little city, had I to choose 
to-morrow between giving up one or the other 
entirely, between devoting myself wholly to 
making every penny out of my garden and my 
poultry-yard, never going to New York at all, 
except for a day or two once or twice a year, 
or beginning again the city life of incessant 
work, of anxiety, of late hours, and bad air, 
with its compensations in the way of more 
money, better clothes, amusements — between 
these two lives I should not hesitate for a mo- 
ment. The country life, as I make my life, 
gives me out-door work, which is now a physi- 
cal necessity, gives me more light and air, gives 



Nothing a Year 25 

me my long evenings before a wood fire, and 
entire freedom from worry or business anxiety. 
My friends may say, and do say, that with- 
out my few weeks or months in the city there 
would occur inevitably a rapid deterioration, 
mentally. They are kind enough to hint that 
at present I am better than I might be. At all 
events, they say, if I do not lose all interest 
in the higher things of life, gradually being 
absorbed in the details of vegetable - rais- 
ing, poultry-keeping, oyster-raking, and duck- 
shooting, my children will suffer and sink to 
the level of the country people around them. 
This is a serious matter. It would be a matter 
of sincere sorrow to me if my boys and girls 
grew up without the tastes of educated men 
and women. But I do not believe that any- 
thing of the kind will occur, I do not believe, 
as I have already said elsewhere, that a boy or 
girl brought up among people who read and 
talk about things beyond the village world will 
fail to absorb something of the spirit of their 
elders. After all, are the people of the town, 
taking the average merchant and shopkeeper, 
so much superior to the people of the country- 



26 Living on Next to 

taking the average fisherman or farmer as a 
type? I very much doubt whether they are 
any happier because they spend ten times as 
much money. Certainly they are not half so 
healthy, and they die earlier. It did not need 
Matthew Arnold to convince many of us that 
American life is often sadly uninteresting, 
commonplace, even inane. We all know how 
sadly vapid is the talk of ninety-nine people 
out of a hundred we meet. Most of us can 
count upon our fingers the men and women we 
know whose talk is worth listening to. I am 
not sure that the effect of city life as seen in 
our large cities is anything to be proud of. In 
the old days, before railroads and post-offices 
and cheap newspapers and books, country life 
meant intellectual isolation. To-day it means 
nothing of the kind ; no matter how far you 
are from the centres of civilization the mails 
bring you all the thought of the great world 
worth recording. The conditions have changed. 
People talk of the inspiration of the crowd, 
the electrical influence of great numbers, the 
brilliant minds reflecting light upon the dull 
ones. I confess that I can see but little of this 



Nothing a Year 



27 



in our American cities. The danger is rather 
that the individual will be colored by his 
surroundings and reduced to that level. Our 
great public schools tend to turn out boys and 
girls all knowing the same things, all thinking 
the same way, all intellectually fashioned upon 
the same model, and that a poor one. Unless 
I am able to provide for my boys and girls 
teachers of exceptional merit, I should rather 
trust to home influence and the district school 
of the country village than to the great public 
schools of large cities, always with the idea 
that the boy would find it possible to work his 
way through college some day, and that the 
girl would not grow up without some idea of 
literature and music. The question with me is 
not whether the influence of the crowds of 
cities is for good, but whether it is not for evil. 




THE SORT OF LIFE WE LEAD 

PERHAPS I cannot do better, in order to 
tell the sort of life that I have found 
possible and profitable upon an income of less 
than $50 a month, than to take from my diary 
the following record of a week. I will say 
nothing of Sunday, as that day is always given 
up by us to church-going, walking, and some- 
times, in hot weather, to sailing and bathing, 
in the morning at least. 

Monday, Sept. — Pouring in torrents; took up a 
bushel of beets and a bushel of carrots and put by 
for winter use in the cellar. After breakfast went 
off in a drizzle of rain sailing with the children to 
Duck Island for a load of salt grass wherewith to 
cover the strawberry bed next December. Got 
enough in an hour, the children helping, to load 
up. The rain in the meantime cleared off, the 
wind coming from the southwest and cooler; 
wheeled up the meadow grass from the boat and 
28 



The Sort of Life We Lead 29 

stacked it up near the strawberry bed ready for use 
by the time the ground is well frozen. Wrote after 
luncheon from one to three o'clock. Started out 
at three for the woods with the children, and went 
two miles to chop down some pines that we can 
have for almost nothing for firewood. Cut up 
enough to make a (juarter of a cord, I should 
think, and got back at sundown with enough twigs 
to make kindling for a week. When my neighbor 
B. gets ready next month to haul our wood-pile 
home, he will find that my axe has been kept sharp. 
The day ended with a splendid break of sunshine, 
the pink of the whole west presaging the coming 
autumn. Every blow of the axe seems to bring up 
pictures of what glorious good fires these pine logs 
will make for us. On the way home stopped for 
the mail, a bundle of books coming from the 
library. After dinner read some sketches of 
Henry James, ])ublished in the old Galaxy years 
ago, which E. sends us as worth reading. They 
have all James' present subtlety with the pictur- 
esque quality that he appears to have lost in some 
degree, judging from his recent French studies. 

Tuesday. — Hard work in the garden before 
breakfast and until ten o'clock. Hoed up all the 
bean plants and planted late carrots; doubtful if 



30 The Sort of Life We Lead 

they come to much so late, but worth trying. Had 
to branch up some of the tomato vines, which were 
too heavy for the twigs already under them. Yes- 
terday's rain seems to have given a new start to the 
whole garden, which last week seemed to be taking 
a rest after the summer's exertions, and ready to 
give up the battle for the year. The late beans, 
carrots, turnips, lettuce, tomatoes looking superb. 
Wrote from ten to twelve, intending to go oystering 
in the afternoon with the children. After lunch it 
was blowing great guns on the bay, the white caps 
in every direction. Only half-a-dozen boats out, 
and those triple-reefed; too rough for pleasant 
oystering, and so started off again for the woods, 
baby and all, the baby going along in his carriage. 
Went in for tree-cutting as if life depended upon it. 
Took a new road across country coming back, and 
got lost, but found a deserted orchard and filled 
the baby-carriage with enough stolen apples to last 
a week. No letters in the mail, no books, nothing. 
Finished up the Galaxy sketches of James, and 
voted them well worth the time spent upon them. 

Wednesday. — A touch of frost in the air, although 
September is not half over. After breakfast, filled 
up some gaps in my new strawberry bed with run- 
ners from the old one. Dug four post-holes in 



The Sort of Life We Lead 3 1 

order to get good stout support for the wire fence 
which must go around the whole garden next year. 
Went oystering after lunch with A. and L. and the 
children. Delightful on the water, although to- 
wards the ocean everything seems to be as deserted 
by the crowd as if it were midwinter. Brought 
back a bushel of oysters in defiance of the law, 
which is not yet up. Opened some of them before 
dinner, and packed the rest in the cellar. For 
dinner we had the sixth unfortunate chicken of our 
devoted little band. Cold enough for a fire; we 
had the first blaze of the autumn, the great bunches 
of ferns and moss-covered twigs which have filled 
the fireplace all summer going first with a crackling 
roar. Read the last of Kennan's articles on Siberia 
from the Century and some of the "open letters." 
Pretty well tired out; between the effects of the 
fire and the oystering began to nod over our books 
by the time the clock struck ten. 

Thursday. — Went over more than half of the 
garden between breakfast and ten o'clock, giving 
the last hoeing that will be needed this year. Not- 
withstanding Monday's rain, the weeds already 
show a disposition to stay in the ground, and it 
is evident that all vegetation has lost heart. Got 
through the task at ten o'clock, and as weeding is 



32 The Sort of Life We Lead 

what I like least about gardening, there is much 
comfort in finding that there is such a thing as get- 
ting ahead of the weeds if you keep up the battle 
persistently enough. Wrote from ten to lunch 
time. After luncheon went with A. and the chil- 
dren over to the beach, sailing our three miles across 
the bay with a free wind in less than half an hour. 
One would scarcely believe that in three weeks so 
great a change had taken place. Three weeks ago 
the beach was alive with people, the bay was full 
of boats, sailing back and forth, the little bathing 
station on the beach had plenty to do, there were 
dozens of people in the surf, and scores walking 
along the sands. To-day we were one of half-a- 
dozen sails to be found as far as the eye could 
reach. On the beach there was complete silence, 
except for the boom of the surf and the pipe of an 
occasional quail. Tradition says that the quail 
along this narrow line of sand, which stretches 
from Fire Island to Quogue, came ashore from an 
English vessel wrecked off Moriches many years 
ago. They were intended for some rich man's 
estate, but escaped here and have done well. 
The season is so nearly through, so far as bathing 
is concerned, that we gathered up our bathing 
suits, camp-chairs, and beach-shades, and put them 



The Sort of Life We Lead 33 

aboard the JVe//y for home. The sail home against 
a brisk, steady northwest breeze was one of the 
most delightful we have had this summer, the nose 
of the boat plowing the water half the way back, 
and the main-sail wet half up the mast. As is so 
often the way on the Great South Bay, the wind 
died out at sundown, and as we carried our beach 
traps up to the house the whole west was aflame, 
the air cooler, but the wind gone. The last of the 
hotel and boarding-house people seem to be going, 
so that we shall soon have the bay to ourselves. 
One storm in early September seems to scare the 
whole crowd off. Had another fire after dinner, 
and read the last instalment of Howells' novel in 
Harper s. 

Friday. — Opened a lot of oysters before break- 
fast and dug the other post-holes before lunch, 
making a long morning's work, as I have no digging 
apparatus fit for the job. Let the chickens out for 
a tramp over the garden, keeping the children to 
see that they did not get into the tomato vines. 
The children picked all the tomatoes for the yearly 
canning — more than three bushels. Wrote after 
lunch until three o'clock, and started out with the 
whole family to go down along the shore about a 
mile from here, where there are some branches of 



34 The Sort of Life We Lead 

dead pine overgrown with silvery moss; took a saw 
along and brought home a lot with which to deco- 
rate; picked up some wonderful grasses of a kind 
unknown to me, which we found growing to a 
height of seven feet in a sort of half swamp, half 
bog. Growing dark early, but not cold enough for 
our fire. Looked up and read some chapters on 
wild grasses, and wrote some private letters. S. 
gave us some reminiscences of Die Meistersiiiger 
on the piano, and A. sang some Schubert songs. 

The talk this evening ran upon the future of 
music in New York, and, while in J. we had a de- 
voted believer in the grandeur and importance of 
our musical future, S. was entirely sceptical, and 
believed that whether or not the Wagner wave had 
a more solid foundation than passing fashion, the 
real love of music was not deep enough to encour- 
age the hope of a permanent opera, such as exists 
in Vienna, Berlin, Munich, and half-a-dozen other 
German cities. The idea that the love of Wagner's 
music is, so to speak, fictitious, and the professions 
of the Wagner enthusiasts merely due to the ex- 
traneous influence of the moment, I hear a good 
deal about, but can never take quite seriously. 
One of my friends insists that the more violent the 
craze for Wagnerism, the sooner it will be over, and 



The Sort of Life We Lead 35 

that the very persons who are now decrying every- 
thing but Wagner will soon be hailing the advent 
of some new light more abstruse and bizarre than 
the Bayreuth master — perhaps Ching-Chang, with 
his orchestra playing in half-a-dozen keys at once. 
I know that this is a common impression among 
unmusical people. But I see around me so many 
persons who are perfectly sincere in the pre-eminent 
position which they gave to this music of the future, 
so-called for many years, and now so much the 
music of the present, that I have long ceased to 
have any misgivings about the matter. The time 
was when, with the neophyte's ardor, I was ready 
to ascribe all opposition to Wagner either to igno- 
rance or dishonesty. Since then, I have met per- 
sons who know something of music, and yet prefer 
Mozart, Beethoven, or Brahms to Wagner, and of 
their honesty I am as well convinced as of their 
knowledge and good taste. Nevertheless such per- 
sons are very few, and whereas among musically 
educated men and women the preference for Wag- 
ner's music above all other is overwhelming, the 
chief opposition is really due to simple ignorance. 
As for argument upon the question, it is very much 
like arguing as to religion; we have no scientific 
data to start from. I may insist that the Meistcr- 



36 The Sort of Life We Lead 

singer prize-song is better music than Silver Threads 
among the Gold, but beyond quoting expert opinions 
in favor of my opinion, what is there to say ? 
Musical judgment must be more or less empirical. 
In painting, in sculpture, in literature, there are 
fixed standards; in music, none. The music which 
to-day the cultivated world considers admirable in 
every respect was condemned a generation ago by 
experts as meaningless, chaotic, and unworthy of 
serious attention. The future of music in New 
York interests us here in the wilderness to the ex- 
tent that it is the chief magnet in drawing us to the 
city when the snow begins to fly in earnest. Were 
it not for the German performances at our opera- 
house, I doubt whether we should consider it worth 
our while to pack our trunks and suffer the ills of a 
city boarding-house for even a fortnight. 

For my own part, I look forward to the day when 
the phonograph will come to our rescue. Although 
this little instrument is yet in its infancy, I do not 
see how any one who has examined it at all can 
doubt its future importance. It may be a year from 
now, or ten years from now, but that some day the 
phonograph will be the reader, singer, and player 
for the family, is to me beyond doubt. I have 
heard results so marvellous from the instrument 



The Sort of Life We Lead Z7 

even in its present crude shape, that when scores 
of inventors have had time to work at it, its per- 
formances will be nothing short of miraculous. In 
music, especially, it seems always to have excelled. 
The first of the Edison phonographs, which were 
admittedly toys, so far as talking is concerned, re- 
produced singing, violin playing, whistling, with 
extraordinary fidelity. The later instrument of to- 
day gives out a piano piece so that not only all the 
notes are heard as if the piano was in the next 
room, but even the overtones and the after-vibra- 
tions of the strings are distinct. Inasmuch as it 
will cost scarcely anything to make duplicates of 
the wax cylinders bearing upon them music, it will 
pay to take great pains and go to heavy expense in 
order to obtain an original cylinder which gives re- 
sults as perfect as possible. Rubinstein may well 
devote himself to playing into huge sounding fun- 
nels, if he knows that duplicates of the little wax 
cylinder at the other end of the funnel are to be 
distributed all over the civilized world, and that 
millions of people now, and perhaps a thousand 
years from now, will listen to an echo of his work. 
This feature of the certain and almost costless re- 
production of these cylinders will cause the search 
for a sound-magnifier to begin again in earnest. 



38 The Sort of Life We Lead 

Some years ago Mr. Edison exhibited an apparatus 
whereby the noise made by a fly walking across a 
sheet of paper was made to sound like the tramp of 
a horse across the stable floor. Is it too great a 
stretch of the imagination to predict that some 
similar means of magnifying sound will be applied 
to the echo of the phonograph ? 

Some day we may have our operas and our con- 
certs at home. 

Saturday. — Delightfully cold again; and off to 
the woods with the children right after breakfast, 
there being no school. Worked hard at the pines, 
while the young ones picked up twigs and chopped 
for the kindling pile; took our luncheon along, and 
ate it with the music of the countless quail calling 
for Bob White from all directions; the breeze was 
from inland, but full of life, and laden with incense 
from the miles of pine between here and Long 
Island Sound. On our way home met S. with a 
fine deer, which, to my amazement, he told us had 
been shot not ten miles from us. The idea of wild 
deer on Long Island would surprise a good many 
New Yorkers. At the store, where we stopped for 
the mail, there are reports of ducks in plenty. A 
man with a good gun ought not to starve around 
here. Two of the children fell asleep at dinner, 



The Sort of Life We Lead 39 

and, after a little music, we decided to go to bed, 
omitting the usual literary exercises, and rejecting 
A.'s proposition to read a chapter on mental lazi- 
ness. The dinner enlivened by a heated discussion 
over the "good gray poet," now reported to be very 
low in health. 

I do not know whether this little extract 
from my diary gives a picture which impresses 
the casual reader as pleasant or the reverse. 
Not once during such a week had I to discuss 
unpleasant matters, or distressingly common- 
place matters with unpleasant or common- 
place people. I had earned enough money by 
writing to more than pay the modest cost of 
this life. Everything but the groceries and 
the little meat required we had supplied our- 
selves — the vegetables, the eggs, the chickens, 
the oysters, the crabs, the honey, and the 
apples — the last stolen. No doubt chopping 
down wood, although an occupation much 
affected by a famous Englishman — perhaps the 
most famous Englishman — of this age, might 
appeal to some of us, owing to the idiotic 
Anglomania of the day, but it is not the sort 



40 The Sort of Life We Lead 

of sport that the average city man yearns for. 
The utilitarian part of it — a very important part 
of it to me, and in fact I view all my sports 
from a utilitarian point of view — certainly 
would not impress the city man who rushes 
out of town for two weeks of the year in order 
to get what he calls recreation. Wood means 
good fires to us, and good big fires are essential 
in our country home. I should say that we 
burn a cord of wood in a fortnight, although 
the big fire is not going all day ; in cold 
weather a small self-feeding stove hidden by a 
screen keeps the living-room comfortable. I 
suppose I might say the same thing in regard 
to oystering. The poet's friend who found 
nothing in the primrose would certainly not 
enjoy oystering. For my part, oystering is 
one of the pleasures of the year. It is one of 
my sports that I rank highest. I sail my own 
boat over to a part of the bay which abounds 
in oysters, and, allowing the sheet to run out, 
I can "tong away" on deck, throwing the 
oysters in their queer growths to the children, 
who throw away the shell and refuse, cutting 
the oysters apart, as they grow mainly in 



The Sort of Life We Lead 4^ 

bunches, and piling them up in the basket, 
which we carry home. Take an afternoon in 
October, with a good breeze blowing, not 
enough to make the water very rough, and, 
with my young ones as company, I can get 
as much real pleasure and certainly as much 
healthy exercise from oystering in the Great 
South Bay as from any sport I know of. 
Then there is the money value of the oysters 
to be thought of. If I could not get a bushel 
of oysters in an afternoon, I should have to 
buy meat. 

I have tried by practical lessons to convince 
several city friends that there is a joy about 
scraping the bottom of the sea for oysters be- 
yond anything that they could have imagined. 
I induced a critical friend of mine to take off 
his coat one fine afternoon and work the 
"tongs." The water was pretty rough, and 
he had to jump about a good deal on deck in 
order to keep his footing. I should say that 
in the half-hour he played at oystering, he 
brought up thirty or forty oysters. At the 
end of that time he said that he would rather 
write a two-column article than rake a bushel 



42 The Sort of Life We Lead 

of oysters, and he smoked cigars and threw 
shells into the water for the rest of the after- 
noon. When I met him a month later in the 
dusty, miserable city of New York, he said that 
he attributed queer pains in his back to that 
oystering experience. Some men are blind to 
the opportunities of this life. 




lixyjIinJll '^1 






WHAT MY CRITICS WILL SAY 

IT is fortunate," said one of my friends to 
whom I described my way of living, 
"that all people do not think as you do, or the 
world would stand still. If we were all to shun 
the city, to go off hunting or oystering every 
day, contenting ourselves with the unambitious 
life you lead, there would be certain deteriora- 
tion. Where would be our inventors, our 
great scholars, who devote their lives to inces- 
sant work, and our merchant princes, who never 
miss a day in their counting-rooms, the men 
who plan vast operations and make the country 
rich and prosperous?" Of course this is the 
common argument against any such scheme as 
mine, and if a man enjoys the management of 
vast commercial operations, if he likes to tele- 
graph here and there to buy tons of lard at a 
low price and telegraph elsewhere to sell them 
at a high price, I am only too delighted to have 
43 



44 What My Critics will Say 

him do so and perhaps thereby enable me to 
buy my lard a little cheaper at our country 
store. By sitting in his counting-room three 
hundred days out of the year, and eight hours 
of the day, he gives me my lard a little cheaper, 
and he finds pleasure in it. The operation 
gives him a big stone house to live in, a car- 
riage which his wife rides in, for he never finds 
any time, an opera box which his wife and 
daughters may enjoy, for he has no knowledge 
of music ; he has never had any time to learn 
anything beyond the quotations of lard in the 
different parts of the world. If these noble 
men devoted to lard and other commercial 
operations, — if they like it, I am only too 
delighted. If I thought they were breaking 
themselves down, losing year after year of 
oystering and wood-cutting in order to give 
me my lard one eighth of a cent a pound 
cheaper than I should otherwise have it, it 
would cast a shadow over my sports ; I should 
hate to think that I was reaping while they 
were laboring. 

Seriously, does any one contend that the life 
of to-day is any happier, any more rational, 



What My Critics will Say 45 

any more healthy, than the life in the Ameri- 
can colonies one hundred years ago? So far as 
material prosperity goes, it seems that there 
was far less poverty then than now in the ne- 
cessaries of life ; the farmhouses were filled to 
overflowing with good things to eat and drink. 
There were few books, and if some inventors 
and workers had not given up country life long 
enough to invent power-presses we might not 
have newspapers and books so cheap as they 
are to-day. But I doubt if any one thinks of 
colonial life in this country as less worth living 
than our life of to-day. Certainly in New 
York City there was not, in proportion to the 
population, one quarter of the poverty, the 
misery, the vice, that we know to-day. There 
was not that fierce struggle for existence which 
blights the lives of so many hundreds of thou- 
sands of our fellow-creatures. 

If the world persisted in playing as I do, 
although few people regard wood-cutting and 
grubbing in a garden as play, should we not 
have had any great inventions, should we not 
have had any steam-engines, or the power- 
press, or the telephone? This would imply 



46 What My Critics will Say 

that the man who devoted a large part of his 
life to such sports as I do, wholly unfits him- 
self for other kinds of work — which I deny. 
My own work which brings me money happens 
to be writing articles for which misguided pub- 
lishers of newspapers pay me. I devote a 
certain number of hours in the week to writing, 
nor in my humble opinion, is it the easy writ- 
ing which is supposed to make such hard read- 
ing. There is no reason why other people who 
choose to cut loose from city life, having found 
its cost greater than its worth, should not em- 
ploy a certain number of hours every day at the 
kind of work for which they happen to have a 
particular bent. I see already that my eldest 
boy will probably turn his attention to machin- 
ery, and perhaps become an electrician. It is 
not absolutely necessary that he should remain 
in the machine-shop all his life in order to 
contribute something to the world's stock of 
machinery. Some of the greatest inventions 
and most valuable suggestions have been made 
by men far away from the great centres of 
life. 

Again, if in our bustling New York we saw 



What My Critics will Say 47 

that most men really do produce valuable work 
essential to the happiness of mankind, there 
might be some misgiving as to the policy of 
isolating one's self from the crowd and en- 
deavoring to get as much enjoyment upon 
comparatively nothing a year as the millionaire 
may get. Who does not know that hundreds 
of the rich men of New York City owe their 
wealth to gambling, pure and simple, the rest 
of the country furnishing the victims and the 
money? Statistics show, for instance, that of 
all the buying and selling done upon the New 
York Produce Exchange, ninety-five per cent, 
represents gambling; five per cent, represents 
actual buying and selling of grain and produce. 
In Wall Street it is still worse. These dozens 
of well-dressed men, the men who own the 
yachts and the fast horses and the big country 
places, do no useful work, produce nothing, 
and if their business could be wiped out of 
existence to-morrow the world would be no 
poorer. Under cover of the little legitimate 
trading or business which has to be done in 
stocks or bonds, this army of gamblers grow 
rich upon the passion of human nature to get 



48 What My Critics will Say 

something without work. Every little town in 
the country sends its money to the great city 
to be matched against the money from some- 
where else. These precious brokers are the 
bankers in the game. To pretend that the 
business is a whit better than gambling with 
dice and cards has always seemed to me hypoc- 
risy ; the man who deals in lard, honestly buy- 
ing lard and selling lard, and not simply betting 
upon the future price of lard, may be doing 
useful work in getting lard where it is plenty 
and carrying it to places where it is scarce, and 
so throughout the whole range of legitimate 
mercantile life. The man who keeps a retail 
shop of any kind is of actual service to the com- 
munity. But the typical broker — what does 
he produce in the course of a year to pay for 
the large sums of money he receives? This is 
an old topic, and I have nothing new to say 
about it. But when people point to me as an 
idler, wasting my time and neglecting my op- 
portunities, and at the same time point to my 
neighbor, the successful broker, as an example, 
I must decline to be impressed. At least, I 
give something in return for what the world 



What My Critics will vSay 49 

gives me. The articles I write may be poor 
enough, but some people read them, and live 
to want to read more, or publishers would not 
buy them. 

I have a dear friend who is a cotton-broker. 
He admits candidly that his business is gam- 
bling, pure and simple, but he contends that if 
people want to gamble, and want to pay him a 
comfortable income for registering their bets, 
there is no reason why he should refuse. If 
people do want to buy actual cotton, he will 
buy cotton for them, although he would 
scarcely know a bale of cotton if he saw one. 
But his customers want to gamble, and pay 
him well for helping them to do so. He has 
no taste or love for chopping wood or raking 
oysters, but enjoys sitting at a big desk for 
several hours a day, receiving checks from cus- 
tomers, paying out the losses and the gains, 
and dropping into Delmonico's in the middle 
of the day for luncheon and a quiet talk about 
the best card in the game to put your money 
on. When a man's conscience can allow him 
to do that sort of business day after day, I do 

not know whether to be glad or sorry for him. 

4 



50 What My Critics will Say 

Another friend of mine, also a broker, to whom 
I said one evening at dinner, "You have pro- 
duced nothing, earned nothing of value to- 
day," replied to me: "Yes, I have. Here is 
a check for $200, the profits of a turn in wheat ; 
it was done in half an hour. I bought low, 
and I sold high." "And," I asked, "do you 
not pity the man who lost that $200, for you 
gave no equivalent in work for it?" This 
seemed to be so extraordinary a view of the 
matter that every one laughed ; no one seemed 
to have the least sympathy for the unfortunate 
loser in the game. Do not these things show 
that this speculation disease is blunting the 
moral sense of the community? My friend of 
whom I spoke first is a man to whose friend- 
ship I owe much, and for whose character I 
have the highest esteem. He is kindliness 
itself. And yet point out to him, or try to 
point out to him, that the life of a broker, al- 
though admittedly gambling, pure and simple, 
is a vicious one, and he will laugh good- 
naturedly, and go on with profound content 
upon his "vicious" course. 

To state briefly my view, to sum up the gist 



What My Critics will Say 51 

of what I have put into the foregoing pages, 
what I advance and believe is that the hard- 
working city man does not get his rights out of 
life. It may be that ignorance is bliss. He 
may be swept so far in the wrong direction as 
to lose all proper estimate of the good things 
of this life; his ideas of relative values may be 
distorted. He may consider that fine clothes 
and a big house make up for lack of real sport ; 
he may find more pleasure in counting bills 
than in sailing or walking. A misguided sense 
of duty may keep him all his life half-starved 
for rational sport; he may, like the unfortu- 
nate person of whom I spoke at the beginning 
of this book, "die in harness" as a typical 
American. I believe that there is an escape 
from the anxiety, the toil, the wear of business 
in rational pursuits offered to us by the coun- 
try, and that we can abandon the town without 
sacrificing culture, education, and intellectual 
life. I am free to admit that I should not ad- 
vise any man accustomed to living in the tittle- 
tattle of the town, accustomed to "paddling in 
social slush," as Thoreau puts it, to go to the 
country carrying nothing with him. If a man 



52 What My Critics will Say 

has no resources of his own, if he finds no 
pleasure in books and literature, I should say 
beware of the country. Any such scheme as I 
have outlined would fail; it may be that very 
few men are so fond of out-door life that they 
would consider the loss of New York's advan- 
tages as of small account in comparison with 
the joys of wood-chopping and oyster-dredg- 
ing. In writing these pages I have had no 
intention of tempting away the clerk from his 
yardstick or his ledger, or the broker from his 
office. I have simply had my say, knowing 
that I am in an insignificant minority. I think 
I have shown that bankruptcy need not result 
from such a course, providing there is a small 
income, so small that most men who reach 
middle age have it at their disposal. And in 
such a case there is the possibility of getting 
also out of the city some of its advantages, for 
there are several months in the depth of winter 
when there is nothing to be done, either in the 
way of sport or work, in the country. I have 
gone so far as to say that even if country life 
meant entire isolation from the city, and de- 
pendence for a living on the money which may 



What My Critics will Say 53 

be made in the country, even then there is 
much to be said in favor of such a move. 
Nevertheless, money is not plenty in the 
country, and if a man and his family are not 
prepared to live in the simplest possible fashion 
and to undergo some little privations, better 
by far stick to the ills that they know of. 




HOME 

THREE years ago I made such changes in 
my business engagements as to begin my 
series of experiments. I wished to find out 
how far a small income of less than $500 a year 
would carry me towards independence of the 
city, its troubles and anxieties, its landlords 
and their bills. The question was whether or 
not I could so supplement such an income by 
manual out-door labor, as to keep my family 
in comfort the year round, and even provide 
for a few weeks of city life in the dead of winter. 
I resigned my city position and took a small 
place fifty miles from New York, where rent 
was cheap, the soil fairly good for gardening, 
and within gunshot of the water. I counted 
upon my garden, my chickens, and my boat 
for a good deal, and I was not disappointed. 
As in every village, the vegetables, eggs, 
chickens, and fish were dear when you had to 
54 



Home 55 

buy them, partly because people have their 
own farm supplies, there being no regular busi- 
ness done in those things, and partly because 
the prices whioli obtain in July and August, 
when the summer boarders or cottagers come 
to be plucked, regulate the prices of the year. 
In the three years that have gone by since 
then, the difficulties and advantages of the 
scheme have defined themselves. I can say 
that in my own case, at least, this mode of life 
is infinitely preferable for a poor man to any 
other that I have discovered. I do not say 
that if some great-uncle in India should leave 
me a fortune, I would not make some changes 
in the direction of greater sport and less actual 
labor, for there is labor in the raising of cab- 
bages. And yet I confess that my pleasure 
over a fortune from the skies would be tem- 
pered with the knowledge that I should no 
longer take satisfaction in raising cabbages for 
the cabbages' sake. I might go on working 
my home acre, but it would be with something 
of the discontent with which I used to work a 
bedroom gymnastic apparatus in the days be- 
fore I deserted the city. When I get through 



5^ Home 

a hard morning's work of hoeing or planting, 
there is a decided satisfaction in the thought 
that by this gymnastic exercise in the sunlight 
I have been cheating the world out of a living. 
But I cannot advise any one who does not 
love hard physical exercise to attempt any such 
experiment. It requires good muscles and 
system, the latter especially, as I shall have 
occasion to insist upon more than once in 
chapters upon my garden, my bees, and my 
chickens. Without system there is as rapid a 
deterioration in a garden as in a business en- 
terprise. Experience has taught me that one 
hour's writing every day, or an hour's garden- 
ing, accomplished with clock-like regularity, 
gives valuable results, where spasmodic work 
ends in comparatively nothing. The same 
rules which obtain in business life hold good 
in my country work. The notion that a whole 
day's work in the garden once a week is as 
good as two hours' every morning, is all 
wrong. I should say that two hours' work in 
the garden once a day, from the middle of 
April to the end of August, would result in 
twice the garden produce that might be ex- 



Home 57 

pected from the same number of hours' work 
given at odd moments — a day here and a day 
there. And so with every other country pur- 
suit. So great is my preference for out-door 
work and sports over writing book reviews and 
magazine articles, that at first I was constantly 
tempted to throw down my pen and take to 
any out-door work in sight, quieting my con- 
science with the plea that I would make up 
time in the evening. When evening came, the 
distasteful task was put off again until the next 
morning. Such rules as are necessary to get 
through a certain amount of work are abso- 
lutely essential. If one allots the hours of the 
day to certain work and allows no interference 
with the arrangements laid down, it is surpris- 
ing what can be accomplished on a little coun- 
try place. This sounds trite enough, and yet 
needs to be insisted upon. I am a thorough 
believer in the practice of a certain famous 
writer, who sits at his desk, pen in hand, from 
nine till twelve every morning, whether ideas 
come or not. He searches diligently, even if 
he does not find, and the brain finally begins 
work without painful urging. 



58 Home 

The new life has turned out so well that I 
have cast in my lot for good with Nature. 
From the beginning of April until Christmas I 
find health and enjoyment away from New 
York. For three months in winter we board 
in the city, the children counting the weeks in 
their impatience to get back to the fields, even 
snow-covered fields. Had I now to choose 
between giving up the city altogether and re- 
turning to the old life of desk-work the year 
round, I should accept the out-door existence 
without a moment's hesitation, both for my- 
self and my children. It was found that to 
build a house such as we required was better 
than continuing to pay rent, and for a year 
preparations were made for this country home 
which should satisfy our aesthetic tastes and at 
the same time cost but little money. 

The house stands upon a bluff, overlooking 
a bay, which spreads east and west for many 
miles, bounded on the south by a long strip of 
barren sand. The water is not more than two 
minutes' walk away, and at the foot of the 
country road which leads down from the gar- 
den to the beach there is a little dock jutting 



Home 59 

out forty or fifty feet into the water, far enough 
to allow sail-boats to be drawn up to it. In 
outside appearance the house has something 
of the English farmhouse. The roof slopes 
east and west from a central ridge-pole, with 
no break of any kind except at the west end, 
where a big and square chimney-stack rises to 
a few feet above the level of the ridge-pole. 
On the east end of the house the roof slants 
down over a piazza, which is always shady in 
the afternoons. Part of the piazza at the 
northeast corner is taken up with a small re- 
ception-room, opening upon the piazza, and 
through which people must pass in order to 
get into the house itself. From this reception- 
room portieres open to the main room of the 
house, which is living-room, library, music- 
room, and everything but dining - room and 
kitchen, in one; when we have a crowd, it is a 
dining-room too. It is thirty feet wide, the 
whole width of the house, and thirty-five feet 
long. At the end opposite the entrance is a 
monumental fireplace, built of brick rather than 
rough stone, because stone is scarce in this part 
of the world. The opening is large enough to 



6o Home 

allow big logs six feet long to be thrown upon 
the fire, and at least four feet deep. Above 
the fireplace and the old-fashioned mantle- 
ledge, which holds a collection of more or less 
damaged bric-a-brac, is a device which perhaps 
only a musician would understand or care for. 
A broad frieze, seven feet wide and three feet 
high, has been laid off in black mortar, and 
upon this background music-staves have been 
outlined with small white sea pebbles. Upon 
these staves is the beginning of the Fire-motive 
which is heard at the end of Wagner's VValkure, 
when Wotan, the great god of Northern my- 
thology, calls upon Loge, the god of Fire, to 
surround the sleeping Brunhilde with fierce 
flames. 

The plaster of this big room is purposely left 
rough, and is colored a sombre red. Across 
the ceiling goes a big beam or girder a foot 
square, and were it not for the cold winds of 
November and December, no plaster at all 
need have been used. Around the whole 
room, in lieu of a cornice, or frieze, runs a 
series of silhouettes of life-size heads of friends 
of the family who have been inmates of the 



Home 6i 

house at one time or another. Such sil- 
houettes, if cut out of light-brown paper, show 
the profile outlined upon a black background 
with extraordinary vividness; the process of 
making them is so simple that almost every 
one has tried it. With a candle and a sheet of 
paper the shadow of a head is thrown upon 
any paper screen, and a pencil-mark will indi- 
cate where the cutting is to be done. Under- 
neath each head is the date in big black letters, 
painted in with a brush. It is impossible to 
feel lonely with such shades, literally, around 
one. 

At one side of the big room the staircase 
rises up and passes in a little gallery, almost 
over the fireplace. Underneath the stairs and 
alongside of the big chimney-place is a door 
opening into a very small dining-room. Right 
back of the main fireplace is the kitchen. The 
whole house measures thirty feet in width by 
fifty feet in length, including the piazza. The 
main room is thirty feet wide by thirty-five 
feet in length, and has windows opening on 
the piazza to the east, on the sea, or the bay, 
to the south, and on the moors to the north. 



62 Home 

Yet it is so placed that the last rays of the 
setting sun get into the house. On the north 
side of the building, which is shingled from 
top to bottom, and has never been painted, 
the storms of winter and the sun of summer 
gradually giving it a silver hue beyond the 
beauty of any artificial paint, is a tennis-court, 
shaded in the afternoon by the house. Back, 
there is a garden, small but perfectly kept 
up, a chicken-yard, an apiary, and other out- 
houses. The nearness to the sea is hinted at 
by the presence of some whales' vertebrae, in 
the shape of seats sprinkled around the 
grounds. The orchard, which is at the back 
of the lot, does aot count for much except in 
the matter of pears, which are wonderfully 
successful in our part of the world. 

Such a house as this, finished in the roughest 
shape, but beautified by loving hands, and 
literally strewn with bits of color in the shape 
of a rug here, a gigantic Japanese fan there, a 
palm-tree in this corner, and no end of pottery 
of the most flamboyant type, has a character 
which no amount of expensive commonplace 
work can give. Its glory is the size of its 



Home 63 

chief room. There is scarcely a private house 
within miles which boasts a room of that size, 
and with all its roughness, size produces a good 
effect. In its present shape, with the five small 
bedrooms upstairs finished in the very cheap- 
est manner, the total cost of the house has been 
under $1600. Counting the cost of some of the 
ornamental woodwork, which I have done my- 
self as a matter of personal pride, perhaps the 
whole building might cost to duplicate $1700. 
Yet the kitchen has all the conveniences of a 
city house. The range gives hot and cold 
water ; there are stationary tubs ; and a small 
wind-mill on the little tool-house near the 
orchard pumps all the water to the tank that 
the house can use. As we are near the sea, it 
is rare that the breeze is not sufficient to turn 
the mill, which cost less than $200 all com- 
plete. The well is a driven one, and gives an 
inexhaustible supply of good water. 

It is hard to give in words anything like an 
adequate picture of this home. Take a hot 
night in summer, with the breeze blowing right 
across our big room, and there is no more de- 
lightful place for music and talk. Until long 



64 Home 

after dark the only light comes from the small 
lamp inside a big swinging wrought-iron bell 
which hangs in the centre of the room, a piece 
which I picked up years ago in a junk-shop; 
it may have been intended for a hanging lamp, 
but I am inclined to think that it was originally 
part of the balcony railing of an old-fashioned 
house in lower Broadway. At all events, it 
serves its present purpose admirably. The 
opalescent glass with which it is now fitted casts 
a subdued light throughout even so big a room 
as ours. If it is pleasant in summer, it is bet- 
ter in winter. Upon one of our cold blowy 
days in November I know nothing so inspirit- 
ing as to get home from my oystering or fishing 
or hunting, to find the big room a blaze of 
light from a royal fire of logs, the candles or 
the lamps giving the right points of color 
throughout, the warmth and the brightness 
making a strong contrast with the cold wind 
outside and the coming darkness. 

The effect of such a room is due largely to 
size, and next, to color. Its size would give it 
a certain air even if the walls and ceiling were 
of unpainted pine. But color may be called 



Home 65 

to the rescue at almost no expense. For the 
sake of warmth in cold weather, as we stay 
here until Christmas, and might want to stay 
here all the year round, the walls have been 
well plastered with rough plaster tinted red, 
and forming an admirable background for 
such pictures, skins, and bits of bric-a-brac 
and color as we hang around. To plaster the 
ce-iling would have given an immense stretch 
of plain surface almost unbroken by light and 
shade, and to avoid this the beams have been 
left open, with the immense girder running 
across the middle of the room at right angles 
with its length. Girder and beams have not 
even been planed ; the girder still shows the 
marks of the axe, and here again rough color 
comes to the rescue, for at a cost of less than 
five dollars the whole ceiling has been painted 
a rough brown red, giving an infinite variety of 
nooks and corners in which the shadows play. 
The frieze which runs round the room three 
feet from the ceiling, and of the decoration of 
which in silhouettes I have already spoken, is 
painted very nearly black. All the painting 
done in this room will last a generation, and 



66 Home 

need never be renewed, so far as actual effect 
goes. The woodwork within reach, the doors, 
the floor, the stairs, the window boxes and 
seats are all oiled pine, which may be kept in 
admirable order at the expense of about ten 
cents a month for kerosene and a little labor in 
applying it. I have not yet tried a winter in 
this house, but from the effect of cold storms 
in the late autumn, I imagine that it may be 
necessary to establish a large self-feeding stove 
in one corner of the big room, and perhaps 
carry the pipes across the room to the chimney. 
For the heating of the upper part of the house, 
I shall try, should we ever need to live in it 
after Christmas, a plan which has worked ad- 
mirably elsewhere — namely, to cut square 
register holes in the flooring of the upper 
rooms and trust to the heat from the living- 
room rising sufficiently to keep water from 
freezing in the bedroom pitchers. Two of our 
upstairs rooms are provided with open hearths, 
and should it become necessary to heat any 
one of the other bedrooms, a small stove, with 
the pipe running through the hall to the chim- 
ney, will be wholly sufficient. We are certain 



Home 67 

to have plenty of air in such a house, and we 
want it. Some statistics which I quote else- 
where from Dr. G. B. Barron, an English 
authority, upon the effect of living in small 
rooms, may be read with interest in this con- 
nection. 

Housekeeping in this house has been re- 
duced to scientific simplicity and I will ven- 
ture to say that no time or money is wasted. 
Some of our devices partake a good deal of the 
picnic. For instance, with a view to saving 
all the labor possible, there is but little wash- 
ing done. The children dress in flannel, and 
to avoid washing dishes we have found it pos- 
sible to use wooden plates for certain meals, 
such as crab suppers; wooden plates can be 
bought for nothing and become excellent 
firewood. 

In order to rent such a house in the country, 
if such a house can be found, which is very un- 
likely, one would have to pay at least four or 
five hundred dollars a summer, especially if it 
was furnished so as to be comfortable for a 
large family. A piano, for instance, and a 
good one, is a necessity with us. Good lamps 



68 Home 

for evenings and ample fireplaces are also neces- 
sary. By making our home in the wilderness, 
if a lovely little village can be called a wilder- 
ness, we are able to fit it with every con- 
venience and comfort, for such things cost but 
little money, after all. I do not suppose that 
my whole investment, land and buildings, but 
not including the furniture, rugs, and fixtures 
that were brought here from the city when I 
gave up work for sport, would represent an 
outlay of more than $3000, and in estimat- 
ing my yearly expenses, I put down rent as 
$150 a year, that being the interest upon this 
amount. 

As I needed no large amount of land, for an 
acre suffices amply for all my purposes, I was 
enabled to buy almost in the heart of a village 
where land always has a certain value; and 
certainly with the improvements I have made 
my purchase has not deteriorated. Had I been 
compelled to go far away from the village, such 
a thing as selling out would have been out of 
the question, for of all the impossible things 
to sell, country property far from a station is 
the most hopeless. Not that I have any idea 



Home 



69 



of selling, and I will not even give the name 
of the little village where we have found a 
home, for fear that I maj' be suspected of 
wishing to raise the price of land by singing its 
praises. 







DETAILS AND DOLLARS— MY 
GARDEN 

{HAVE tried this country life and found 
that it answers all the requirements of my 
modest way of living. In looking over my 
sources of income, I should place my garden 
first and my poultry-yard next. Of course, 
after some years of experimenting, I have dis- 
covered other, but subordinate, sources of in- 
come. For instance, having much time upon 
my hands and aiming to get all the sunshine and 
fresh air and physical exercise that I can find 
during nine months in the year on my country 
acre, I took up a good many little schemes for 
money-making — or rather money-saving, for I 
believe that the city man who retires to the 
wilderness with the idea that he is going to 
make money there, will, in ninety-nine cases 
out of a hundred, be disappointed. I can save 
money in the country by providing things that 
70 



My Garden 71 

we should buy almost as necessaries — for in- 
stance, vegetables, eggs, honey, fish, oysters, 
small fruits, and wood for open fires. The 
man who, having managed to obtain a little 
place of his own, even if not more than an acre 
or two in extent, will be singularly unfortunate 
in my opinion, or will work with bad judgment, 
if he does not succeed in providing for his 
family all the vegetables, both for winter and 
summer, that they can use, all the small fruits, 
all the eggs and chickens, and, if he is on the 
sea-shore, all the shell-fish that the neighbor- 
hood affords. 

To go into details, and taking my own case 
because, having done what I have done without 
much special knowledge and no apprenticeship, 
so to speak, any one else animated with a love 
of out-door work will be able to do as much, 
or more, here is a list of the things which I have 
been able to provide in sufficient quantity for a 
large family : vegetables in profusion through- 
out the summer, and enough for a large part 
of the winter; strawberries and small fruits, 
more than could be used; ten times ths honey 
that could be used winter and summer, the 



72 Details and Dollars 

honey sold being part of the actual money in- 
come of the year; during autumn and early 
winter, all the oysters and crabs that the family 
could be prevailed upon to eat, the children at 
last refusing to accept oysters in any shape as 
a substitute for meat; all the eggs and more 
than could be used, and chickens for the table 
from the end of July until far into the winter. 
With the additional experience of several years 
of this life I find other sources of income loom- 
ing up, or rather of money-saving, for I should 
like to emphasize the idea that it is not money- 
making I aim at. Some of my friends have 
succeeded admirably with pigeons ; others have 
done wonders with mushrooms, an acquaintance 
of mine out in Jersey having paid his rent and 
the wages of a man out of the proceeds of one 
small mushroom house not twenty-five feet 
square. These are things for future experi- 
menting with me, but of the others I can speak 
with knowledge. 

At the same time I would warn any one that 
there is a certain amount of danger, the worst 
side of I he picture having been set forth amus- 
ingly, although too flippantly, in my opinion, 



My Garden 73 

by Mr. Robert Roosevelt, in his amusing book, 
Five Acres Too Much. As I have already hinted 
in my garden talk, there must be hard work 
and systematic work, and work done in person, 
and not by proxy. It may be said that the 
hired man is the bane of every garden so far as 
actual money-saving is concerned ; ten to one 
the inexperienced city man will find the wages 
of his man about double the value of the vege- 
tables or fruits obtained. There are seasons of 
extraordinarily bad luck in gardening — no rain, 
or too much rain ; no sun, or all sun ; but with 
a small garden of an acre or less the intelligent 
workman is almost master of the situation. I 
can point to no great money-making operations 
as the result of my own gardening, but I 
know of more than one instance in which high 
culture of a careful and intelligent kind upon 
one acre of land has produced a money profit 
of $1200 in one year. This, to be sure, was 
done in the neighborhood of high-priced mar- 
kets, and by an expert. The secret of it, as I 
learned by watching the process almost day by 
day, was to allow no bit of the plot to go to 
waste. Every square foot of the 43,560 square 



74 Details and Dollars 

feet in that acre bore its crop, and bore the 
best crop that could be obtained from it and 
nothing else. The secret of keeping down 
weeds was never to let them get a beginning. 
One man was employed in doing nothing but 
stir up the earth with a cultivator, with the re- 
sult that every bit of good in the earth and in 
the manure that was put into it went into the 
vegetables. You cannot raise two crops at the 
same time from the same ground, and it must 
always be borne in mind that between vege- 
tables and weeds, the weeds are by far the 
hardiest and most voracious. 

Mr. Roosevelt, in his Five Acres Too Muck, 
seems to have had peculiarly bad luck from be- 
ginning to end. Everything that he took hold 
of — cow, pigs, horse, garden, fruit-trees, straw- 
berries, chickens — turned out badly, and he 
could not find enough to say of the misery of 
his experience. He admitted that he had been 
led to that experiment by reading Teti Acres 
Enough.^ I will confess that I was led to my 
experirfients by the same book, but my experi- 
ence has been entirely satisfactory to myself, 
and I should be sorry to think that it was be- 



My Garden 75 

yond me to keep a small garden in beautiful 
order and raise a lot of chickens. 

The poultry question has been so often gone 
over, and so many columns have been written 
about the vast sums of money to be made by 
raising poultry, by sending spring chickens to 
market, or by selling eggs when they are dear, 
that it is scarcely worth while to say more than 
a word about my chickens here, I have in- 
variably found that the schemes of my friends 
who went into poultry-raising as a business, 
and several of them have done so, turned out 
badly, partly because they expected to make 
money out of the business instead of a mere 
living, and partly because the keeping of one 
thousand chickens seems to be a dangerous 
proceeding — to the chickens. In my own case 
I have never attempted to have more than fifty 
chickens at a time. With an insignificant ex- 
penditure this flock has proved to be quite 
sufficient. Again this is a case where simple 
care and system are necessary. In the poultry- 
yard as well as in the garden beautiful order 
and precision in work pay. In our part of the 
country ducks have also proved to be one of 



76 Details and Dollars 

the native resources, but of that I have no per- 
sonal knowledge. 

As to the resources of the water, every one 
cannot live at the sea-shore, and even at the 
sea-shore there is not always an oyster bed 
near, or clams, or even great lots of crabs. 
Friends of mine who have attempted for a few 
months something of the same life that I lead 
nine months in the year and have pitched their 
tents on the Massachusetts coast, really seem 
to get more out of the water than out of the 
land. They get an extraordinary number of 
fish, lobsters, and clams, they get sea-weed 
which they use as manure, and scarcely a day 
passes without some kind of sea food making 
its appearance upon their table. I have never 
been so fortunate as to be placed where the 
fishing was of such a nature that I could de- 
pend upon it from day to day to furnish the 
table. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that 
during the summer and autumn I have pro- 
vided more than fifty dollars' worth of good 
fish of various kinds, and I leave out of account 
entirely the oysters, because they can be had 
for almost the picking up where we are. With 



My Garden TJ 

us the bay furnishes perhaps the most valuable 
manure to be found along the coast — the bony- 
fish which the fishermen get in their nets in 
enormous quantities and either sell to factories 
where the oil is squeezed out of them or throw 
them on the land to be used by the farmers as 
manure. Making a liberal estimate, I should 
think that the actual money value of the fish, 
crabs, and oysters that I get during the sum- 
mer must be at the least one hundred dollars, 
and this is sport, as many city men will admit, 
and none the less sport because done week after 
week, and not during a few days' escape from 
the city. 

I still remember with something like enthu- 
siasm the impression that the famous book — 
much ridiculed but nevertheless of serious value 
to so many persons, — Ten Acres Eno7igh, made 
upon me many years ago. At the time when 
I came across it by chance I was very tired of 
city life, of late hours and long hours, of nerv- 
ous strain, of incessant work with few breath- 
ing spells. My routine at that time consisted 
of steady labor from nine o'clock in the morn- 
ing until twelve o'clock at night with very few 



78 Details and Dollars 

intervals for rest and recreation. And then it 
often occurred that work which had to be done 
took me out of bed long before daylight. Four 
years of this sort of drudgery with very small 
prospects of release in the future or of reward 
which would have made such toil bearable, 
often caused me to turn over in my mind 
whether there was not some avenue of escape. 
As country pursuits had always had a fascina- 
tion for me from childhood, I had heard more 
or less of the famous Ten Acres Enough. One 
night as I was leaving my office a friend pre- 
sented me with an old copy of the book, which 
he said would interest me as I was fond of 
preaching upon the superiority of country life 
to city life. On the way home I opened it 
with but small expectations that anything in 
it could apply to my own case. With all my 
love for the country and for country pursuits 
I had never thought of myself as a practical 
farmer or of the possibility of making any kind 
of a living out of the soil. It had been pointed 
out to me too often that while potatoes and 
cabbages are raised all about New York by men 
who make a poor living at it, any German or 



My Garden 79 

Irishman just landed at Castle Garden could 
raise more potatoes or cabbages than I because 
he would have more muscle to put into the 
work. 

Many of my readers may happen to know 
that Ten Acres EnoiigJi is the record of the suc- 
cessful attempt of a Philadelphia merchant to 
support himself and his family by raising straw- 
berries and other small fruits. Middle life had 
found him no nearer fortune than when he be- 
gan ; he felt that strength was ebbing away and 
he was losing enthusiasm ; business cares were 
becoming thicker rather than otherwise. Notes 
had to be met which caused him constant 
anxiety. He could take no pleasure in life. 
One day a friend suggested to him to drop the 
whole effort for a fortune and try for a com- 
fortable living in quieter, less ambitious, but 
safer fields. He took the advice and sold out 
his business, realizing two thousand dollars, 
with which sum he bought a little place of ten 
acres eight miles from Philadelphia, and planted 
it mostly with strawberries. The book gives 
the results of five years* work, with figures 
showing exactly what money came in and what 



8o Details and Dollars 

went out. At the end of the five years he had 
recovered health and spirits ; he had kept his 
family in comfort; he had lived an out-door 
life of far more interest to himself than any 
business life could have been ; and he found 
his property more valuable and his bank ac- 
count larger than when he began. I confess 
that once having plunged into Ten Acres 
Enough I read the book through with more 
eager interest than if it had been the most 
absorbing novel. Here was what I had been 
looking for. I loved sunshine, I was fond of 
gardening, I had a passion for grubbing in the 
earth, for watching things grow. I had had 
many years of city life, and far more than my 
share of city amusements as my connection 
with newspapers had supplied me with tickets 
to all places of entertainment. I said to my- 
self : "This is the life for me ; I will raise straw- 
berries, raspberries, blackberries, and other 
pleasant things, and if I do not grow rich I 
shall at least have strength and health where- 
with to enjoy the sunlight and the country air." 
For months this idea haunted me without 
taking practical shape It is no easy matter 



My Garden 8i 

for a man absorbed in professional life, es- 
pecially newspaper life, to get out of it, and 
without capital as I was, the notion had some- 
thing unpleasant about it. To cut loose from 
an assured income was dangerous. The straw- 
berries might not grow, the drought might kill 
my blackberries, there might be a glut in the 
market when I came to sell, even if I had any- 
thing to sell. I might get tired of solitude, and 
might yearn for the nervous activity of the city 
again. I might come to think that a good opera 
was worth a million strawberry plants, and the 
end might be — as most of my friends pre- 
dicted — that I should sell my ten acres at a 
tremendous sacrifice, and take up my newspaper 
work again under greater disadvantages than 
ever. Nevertheless, so firmly was I convinced 
that there is a joy in gardening well worth striv- 
ing for, that when spring opened I took a little 
house in New Jersey and began to feel my way 
along. I was quite convinced that for a man 
who knew nothing about gardening except 
theoretically, only failure would result from 
burning my ships behind me at once. So I 
kept on with my work in the city, but moved 

6 



82 Details and Dollars 

out to the country, taking a little place with a 
small garden. Meantime I bought every popu- 
lar book bearing upon the subject of garden- 
ing, and I subscribed to several agricultural 
newspapers, which I read with conscientious 
thoroughness. I have quite a little library 
upon agricultural matters, collected that spring 
and summer. 

My garden, to begin with, was in the most 
rudimentary condition, having been allowed to 
run to grass. After digging up a spot about 
ten feet square in the turf, taking the early 
morning for the work, I decided that it would 
require all summer to get the garden fairly 
spaded up, and so I hired a stalwart Irishman 
to do the work for me, which he did in a week, 
charging me nine dollars for the job. As he 
professed to be also an expert in planting vege- 
tables, I bought a supply of seeds in the city 
and entrusted them to him, assuring myself 
that once in the ground the rest of the work 
would fall to me; if I could not keep a garden 
patch fifty feet square clear of weeds, I had 
better abandon the business at once, and all 
hopes of making a living out of scientific gar- 



My Garden 83 

dening. The beginning was an unfortunate 
one. The weather happened to be first very 
wet, and then so dry and hot that my vege- 
tables were unable to break their way through 
the baked earth. When my peas and beans 
still gave no signs after being in the ground 
two weeks, I discovered that the whole 
work would have to be done over again. A 
Presidential campaign was beginning which 
kept me in town often late at night, so that 
the chief labor of the garden fell to my faithful 
Irishman, who got far more satisfaction out of 
it than I did. The vegetables finally did come 
up above the surface, and many an evening I 
finished a hard day's work by pumping and 
carrying hundreds of gallons of water to pour 
upon potato plants, tomato plants, bean stalks, 
and other things which a friend of mine, an 
expert in such matters, assured me were curi- 
osities of malformation and backwardness. My 
Irishman told me that it was all for want of 
manure, and by his advice I bought six dollars' 
worth of manure from a neighboring stable, 
and had it spread over the ground. The bills 
for my garden were meanwhile mounting up. 



84 Details and Dollars 

I had begun the spring with a garden ledger, 
keeping an accurate account of every penny 
spent, and hoping to put on the other side of 
the page a tremendous Hst of fine vegetables. 
The accounts are before me now, and I pre- 
sume that every one who had been through 
the same experience has preserved some such 
record. 

The tools — rakes, forks, spades, hoes, water- 
ing-pots, lawn-mower, etc. — cost me $i8. 
Wages to my stalwart friend during the whole 
season were $26.00; seeds were $2.80; manure, 
$6.00; wire fencing, made necessary in order to 
keep out a flock of my neighbors' hens labor- 
ing under the idea that in my garden were to 
be found the best insects of the whole neigh- 
borhood, and acting upon this belief, $5.00 — 
total, $57.80. Of this amount the tools and 
the wire fencing — say $20 — may be looked 
upon as well invested for the future, so that 
my actual outlay, for which I should receive 
an equivalent in the shape of vegetables, was 
about $^/. The list of vegetables begins with 
entries day by day ; then the garden produce is 
lumped at the end of the week; and finally in 



My Garden 85 

September the garden appears to have yielded 
nothing but tomatoes and beets, the potatoes 
having failed to come to anything, owing to a 
variety of causes, which my assistant explained 
in different ways on different occasions. One 
day he said that the potato bugs had done it, 
and another day he was convinced that if I had 
put in manure enough earlier in the season I 
might have had splendid potatoes. In other 
words, if I had spent ten dollars for manure, 
and had given up my days to fighting the bugs, 
I might have had five dollars' worth of potatoes 
in return. 

The first entry of vegetables is in a bold 
hand, and is to the effect that on the loth of 
June we had some radishes of an estimated 
market value of five cents. Then come lettuce 
and peas, and later on spinach, beans, radishes, 
carrots, and finally tomatoes in profusion. For 
some purpose which I could never fathom, half 
of my garden plot was planted with cucumbers 
of a particularly hard and leathery type. They 
throve in the most wonderful fashion, and there 
were bushels of them, of no earthly use to any 
one ; we could not eat them or give them away. 



86 Details and Dollars 

They rotted where they grew, and seemed to 
serve no purpose except perhaps to enable my 
assistant to point to something in the garden 
which looked like a successful vegetable. To 
be brief over a somewhat painful experiment, 
and estimating the garden stuff that we really 
got out of my little plot, I should say that de- 
livered at our door the stuff would have cost 
us not more than $15, or about half its actual 
cost. I do not take into account the value of 
my work in hoeing up tons of weeds and pour- 
ing down tons of water, because the practical 
knowledge I gathered more than offsets these 
tremendous labors. 

In the meantime I had profited by studying 
neighboring gardens, notably a very beautiful 
one belonging to a neighbor who did all the 
work himself and produced a crop of vege- 
tables which seemed to me nothing less than 
miraculous. Every inch in this neighbor's 
garden seemed to grow something; his vege- 
tables took up so much room, were so close 
together that the weeds had not a chance to 
squeeze themselves in. He worked upon the 
theory that one square foot of garden properly 



My Garden 87 

manured and properly attended to was more 
productive than four square feet half taken care 
of, and his results proved the soundness of his 
ideas. It was owing to this neighbor's advice 
that my second summer's work in my little 
garden — for I was determined not to give the 
ground up although it had proved a costly toy, 
was far more satisfactory in every way than 
the first. I discovered that my neighbor's 
total expenses of the year for his garden, which 
was a far larger one than mine, were less than 
$10, nine tenths of which sum went for manure. 
He did all the work himself, got his seeds and 
plants from neighboring gardens, and the value 
of his product exceeded $ioo during the sum- 
mer. This was something like gardening, and 
if one man not a Hercules could do it, why not 
I? My second summer showed that by devot- 
ing an average of two hours a day to my little 
garden patch I could save about fifty dollars in 
the vegetable bill of the family. Estimating 
that the garden work begins on the ist of May 
and ends on the ist of September, we have 
four months, or 120 days, during which I gave 
two hours a day, or 240 hours, to my garden. 



88 Details and Dollars 

At ten hours a day this represents twenty-four 
days or a month's work. At my regular pro- 
fession I can make $200 or more during the 
month, so that at first view the occupation of 
raising vegetables does not appear well, finan- 
cially speaking. Upon the other hand, con- 
sidering that these two hours a day were to me 
hours of genuine enjoyment and that the work 
unquestionably did me good in every way, I 
can say that the garden was a success. 

A good many years have passed since I be- 
gan my little garden out in New Jersey. In 
the course of events I found myself compelled 
to give up playing at garden and to move back 
to New York. Newspaper life takes all or 
nothing out of a man, and I was by no means 
ready or able to neglect serious work which 
paid me a very fair living in order to amuse 
myself in a Jersey garden. But during those 
years of experiment I had learned a good deal 
about practical gardening. I learned enough 
to know that with less than three hours' work 
a day I can provide a good-sized family with all 
the potatoes, cabbages, turnips, carrots, onions, 
and beets that will be needed the year round ; all 



My Garden 89 

the raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and 
currants for the summer; all the peas, beans, 
beets, lettuce, spinach, and tomatoes that will 
be needed in summer. And I can do this with 
an expenditure for manure not exceeding $12, 
provided the ground is in reasonably good 
condition. I think that the reader will admit 
that this is something well worth knowing. 
The trouble with most men who go into gar- 
dening upon a small scale is that they pay out 
money for what they should do themselves to 
men who are often lazy or dishonest, and that 
while they themselves may work very hard for 
a few hours or a few days, the work is inter- 
mittent, and that is the worst sort of work for 
a garden. With a garden, the maxim, ' ' a stitch 
in time saves nine," is particularly true. I 
have seen pieces of ground in such a condition 
that in half an hour's work with a steel hoe I 
could kill every weed there ; three weeks later 
to do the same thing would have required a 
day's work or more, and then it would not have 
been well done. To manage a small garden 
scientifically is a matter for the most systematic 
kind of work. Three hours a day of steady 



90 Details and Dollars 

work upon a plot one hundred feet square will 
give everything that can be wanted in the 
shape of small vegetables. If potatoes and 
cabbages are required a larger patch will be 
needed, but even then systematic culture will 
tell wonderfully. The use of new tools, such 
as the hand cultivator, which does more work 
in half an hour than can be accomplished with 
a hoe in two hours, has greatly simplified the 
raising of vegetables in a small garden. It is 
also more than true that one square foot well 
cared for is equal to three times the area half 
cultivated. 

Still another source of income which has 
been suggested to me by my tramps around 
the country, and a business which offers no ex- 
traordinary difficulties to the inexperienced, is 
the raising of fine fruits for our New York 
market. We have scores of farmers in my 
neighborhood who make a living, and a com- 
fortable one, from their fields and their 
orchards, and trust almost to luck for the 
quality of what they have to sell. I have been 
struck many times with the wonderful return 
for care and manure made by several species of 



My Garden 9^ 

pear-trees that flourish on Long Island. For 
the city beginner to undertake to raise apples, 
or strawberries, or common pears, or in fact 
any orchard or garden produce common in the 
markets, is to experiment against heavy odds, 
as he will come in competition with men who 
have been at it all their lives. At the same 
time, perhaps he will succeed, owing to better 
methods and less dependence upon routine. 
But what I should advise the city man who 
wants to make some money out of his six or 
eight months' work in the open air, is to try 
for something not produced by his neighbors, 
or not produced in the same way. For in- 
stance, there are new kinds of pears, which 
grow profusely in parts of Jersey and in parts 
of Long Island, which nevertheless still bring 
a large amount of money as compared with 
apples or ordinary pears. I should advise the 
city man to go in for culture of this sort, de- 
voting himself to an orchard of half an acre, if 
he cannot keep any more trees in perfect order. 
I have seen such astonishing results from these 
new species of pears, that were it not easier for 
me to make more money by one hour's writing 



92 Details and Dollars 

a day than by ten hours' work in an orchard, 
I should certainly go into the business. So 
much is said about the impossibility of making 
any money at gardening or fruit-raising that it 
is almost hopeless to convince any one to the 
contrary, and it is far from my wish to do any- 
thing of the kind. My aim is to tell how I 
manage to do without money, not how to make 
it. The first is a topic upon which I have had 
some experience, for reasons beyond my con- 
trol, while as to the last I cannot speak as an 
expert. The scores of books which prove that 
if a man can raise ten thousand quarts of straw- 
berries from an acre of ground, and sell them 
at ten cents a quart, he will grow rich and his 
family will rejoice, are mostly based upon the 
experience of some wonderfully clever person ; 
the truth of their theory is irrefutable, pro- 
vided you admit the premises. They remind 
me of a circular once sent to me by a man who 
was offering fame and fortune in return for ten 
cents in stamps. He set forth that if I bought 
from him a certain prescription for a magic 
hair-grower, to be manufactured at four cents 
a bottle, fortune was mine. For if I sold 



My Garden 93 

ten thousand bottles of the stuff to agents at 
fifteen cents a bottle, who in turn would sell it 
at twenty-five cents a bottle, I would make 
eleven hundred dollars, the agents would make 
a thousand dollars, and the whole neighborhood 
would rejoice, except perhaps the bald-headed 
man who bought the magic restorer. I can 
tell people how not to get rich at newspaper 
writing, but I am not yet ready to offer any 
advice of the sort given in books patterned 
after Ten Acres Enough. My ideal orchard is 
one given up to trees and grass, and used for 
poultry until the fruit begins to fall. The 
trees, the grass, and the poultry are all pretty 
sure to thrive with the most ordinary care. 
The chickens kill the worms, and the hay crop 
will more than pay for all the labor expended 
in taking care of the trees. As in a garden, my 
experience has been that the very best results 
in an orchard are to be obtained by the highest 
culture of small plots. Two apple-trees of a 
good sort, kept well pruned, well manured, and 
free from insects, are likely to yield as much 
fruit as half-a-dozen neglected trees, and the 
picking will not entail half the labor. I see the 



94 Details and Dollars 

same advice given every day in agricultural 
papers and books throughout the country, and 
yet for some reason a really well kept orchard, 
with all the trees in prime condition, the fences 
in neat repair, and not a superfluous twig to be 
seen, is one of the rare sights of the country. 
It is also the commonest sight to find upon one 
farm a few trees which give a splendid grade 
of fruit, while the next mile or two will show 
nothing but apples or pears scarcely worth the 
picking — all because the man who planted 
would not take the trouble to pay a few cents 
more in order to get choice stock from a good 
nursery. Of all the economies that pay least, 
is the saving of a few dollars in stocking a 
young orchard. I have talked with many of 
our farmers about this, and almost invariably 
the blunder is due to small economy ; they got 
their trees from some one in the neighborhood 
who sold cheap as compared to the prices of 
first-class nurseries, and as a result, year after 
year, their orchards gave them half the returns 
which would have been received from good 
trees. My ambition is some day to prove by 
dollars and cents that it is not impossible for a 



My Garden 95 

city-bred man fond of country work to make 
money in an orchard, for nothing that I have 
heard to the contrary (and every friend that I 
have warns me of the futility of such an at- 
tempt) has convinced me that starvation lurks 
everywhere but in the dust of the city or the 
turmoil of trade. 




WITH FISH-LINES AND NETS 

BESIDES my oystering, the fishing that I 
have done has proved to be of no small 
value as part of our scheme. Unfortunately, 
since settling down by the water the fishing ap- 
pears to have become somewhat scarce in my 
neighborhood as compared with former years. 
Forty years ago, so old men tell me, the whole 
Great South Bay was full of salt-water fish ; there 
were inlets from the ocean at several points be- 
tween Fire Island and Moriches, and the sea- 
water ran in through deep channels which years 
ago became choked up with sand. To-day there 
is no opening in the Great South Bay to the 
ocean except at Fire Island. At the other end 
of the bay, twenty-five miles eastward, the 
water has become so fresh that clams will not 
live in it, and most fish are shy about going so 
far from deep water. Nevertheless, we catch 
crabs by the hundred, and in the autumn many 
96 



With Fish-Lines and Nets 97 

young bluefish, known in the neighborhood as 

"snappers." Once a week I sail my boat 

down to the neighborhood of Fire Island, 

where from June to November we get some 

good bluefishing, thanks to our "chumming" 

machines, a device for chopping up bony-fish 

in appetizing shape. The boat is brought to 

anchor, the sails furled, and this chopped fish 

is thrown overboard in small quantities. The 

bluefish, running in or out with the tide, are 

attracted by the "chum," and come to feed. 

The hooks are baited, and thrown overboard 

along with the chum. If fish are plenty, the 

piece of chum which hides a hook is sure to be 

snapped up. When bluefishing is fair in the 

Great South Bay we can count upon a catch of 

from twenty to thirty fish, ranging from one to 

five pounds. But bluefishing is an uncertain 

sport. I find from my diary that out of twenty 

trips to Fire Island, eleven produced nothing, 

except that each trip gave us ten or twelve 

hours of glorious sailing. An advantage of 

this bay for sailing over any other that I know 

of is that if rough weather comes on the little 

craft can take shelter at any of the many 
7 



98 With Fish-Lines and Nets 

villages skirting the bay, and the fishermen can 
get home by train if it is necessary. There is 
always a safe harbor within twenty minutes' 
sail. 

Our crabbing is enough of a resource to be 
worth writing about. After August it is at its 
best. Then the few summer boarders and cot- 
tagers who linger after the middle of September 
join with the native in hunting the scavenger 
of these waters, counting a day lost which does 
not bring at least a score of big crabs to an 
end which I hope is not "something linger- 
ing." As an earnest believer in the value of 
the late Mr. Bergh's work, I have tried to find 
out by experiment exactly how lingering is the 
death by boiling water to which the crab's 
preference for stale fish and other bits of kitchen 
offal finally brings him. Repeated experiments 
show that death is almost instantaneous, if it is 
true, as is so often said, that a crab lets go his 
hold only when dying. In order to clear one's 
conscience upon this matter it is necessary to 
submit the crab to what may be extremely 
painful proceedings. Let a strong crab get a 
good hold upon a piece of rope or any other 



With Fish-Lines and Nets 99 

soft material not too intimately connected with 
yourself, and lower him slowly into boiling 
water; the crab will let his claws and nearly 
half of his body get parboiled before he thinks 
of letting go. Instead of this, begin by plung- 
ing the crab instantly under, and the claws open 
at once. The notion that it is more humane, 
as some people contend, to half pulverize the 
crab with an axe before boiling him, is the 
sheerest nonsense, as any one can find out by 
experiment. 

The last year has been an excellent one for 
crabbing — a better catch has not been known 
since 1876. Earlier in the season, before the 
first crabs had made their appearance, an old 
"Cap'n " and fisherman of this neighborhood, 
who is an expert in all matters pertaining to 
fish, tides, weather, and profane language, told 
me that there would be no crabs this year. 
He is a dear old man, close upon eighty years 
of age, who is so full of gentle humor and 
kindly shrewdness that he can rip out oath 
after oath without offending any one. "He 
swears so gently," said a lady of my acquaint- 
ance, "that it does n't seem like real swearing. " 

LofC. 



loo With Fish-Lines and Nets 

"That ere blizzard," said the old fellow 

to me one evening in June, as we sat on some 
eel-pots discussing the next day's weather, 

"killed every crab in the bay, sure. The 

ice hurt 'em , and then the bliz- 
zard made the water so cold that the crit- 
ters all died. You won't see a crab here 

this summer." 

But it seems that the crab crop is somewhat 
like the peach crop. The regular spring an- 
nouncement to the effect that every peach-bud 
in the country' has been nipped by the frost is 
hailed with joy by every lover of peaches, who 
then feels sure that a fair crop can be counted up- 
on. The blizzard may have done many things ; 
it certainly did not kill all the crabs. It knocked 
down the docks of the neighborhood, and put 
back the spring about a fortnight ; it did all 
sorts of damage to chimneys, roofs, and fences. 
But it did not kill the crabs, and it gave an in- 
exhaustible topic of conversation to the gentry* 
who gather around the store-stove six nights 
out of the seven to settle the affairs of the na- 
tion, if talk can settle them. If the fish did 
not bite ; if the summer was windv and cold — 



With Fish-Lines and Nets loi 

which it was ; if the surf was dangerous, the 
apple crop poor, and the potatoes rotten, the 
fault was laid to the blizzard, that awful visita- 
tion, when, as the Cap'n says, "New York 
did n't hear from us for more than a week." 

The crab is a stupid fellow about the traps 
laid for him, and when hungry will hang to a 
bit of fish even when lifted half out of water. 
The later the season and the bigger the crab, 
the more certainty that no crabs will escape. 
I suppose that we catch our crabs in about the 
same fashion that crabs are caught everywhere ; 
tie a piece of fish or meat to a string, throw it 
off a wharf or off your boat, and wait for a 
bite. The crab, prowling about the bottom 
seizes it with his nippers, and begins his meal. 
By raising the bait a few inches from the bot- 
tom, a person can tell, after small experience, 
whether a crab is around or not. If the crab 
likes his fare, he will hold on until he is drawn 
well up to the surface, when, with a deft move- 
ment, the scoop-net is run under him, and all 
is over for that crab. All kinds of bottoms 
seem to suit him — sand, mud, even eel-grass. 
When caught in a calm and able to drift slowly 



I02 With Fish-Lines and Nets 

over the flats which extend for a mile or more 
into the bay from the narrow sand strip which 
separates us from the ocean, one can catch crabs 
by the dozen if quick with the net and not too 
afraid of falling overboard. The favorite habitat 
of the beast, however, is the channels which 
skirt the shore, especially where the offal from 
boarding-houses or hotels is thrown into the 
water. It is counted poor sport when an after- 
noon's crabbing does not produce thirty or 
forty crabs. On calm days, the boys often 
catch their basketful by watching the water 
along the sides of the docks ; the crabs swim 
on the surface in search of the shrimps and 
minnows that hide in the grass and sea-weeds 
that grow upon the spiles. 

The money value of the crab, even here, 
where they can be caught by wholesale, is suffi- 
cient to cause many of the fishermen to make 
a business of "shedding " them in confinement. 
Fair hard-shell crabs are worth, even upon the 
dock here, thirty cents a dozen, while for 
"shedders" or soft-shells, a dollar a dozen is 
not considered exorbitant. This high price of 
soft-shell crabs has resulted in a regular busi- 



With Fish-Lines and Nets 103 

ness of keeping in floating boxes or "cars" 
such crabs as are about to shed their shells. 
An expert can tell the crab that is going to 
shed almost without looking at him. By dint 
of questioning every man within two miles of 
here who owns a car I think that I can tell 
some crabs that are going to shed. To the 
inexperienced all crabs look alike; they are 
crawling creatures with a surprising grip. Few 
persons, and no women, ever get near enough 
to a crab to admire his superb coloring and the 
delicacy of his work upon a piece of old fish. 
But the student who has listened to a dozen 
life-long experts and has tried to reconcile their 
wholly opposite accounts of the nature of the 
animal, knows that there are crabs and crabs. 
Turn a dozen crabs over on their backs and 
they may easily be divided into three classes. 
One set will be perfectly white, with the 
"breast-bone" or plate a narrow strip; an- 
other set have the breastplate expanded so 
as almost to cover the whole shell and streaked 
in dark blue and green ; still others have the 
narrow breastplate, but the whole under part 
of the crab is discolored and not a cream-white. 



104 With Fish-Lines and Nets 

The first class comprise crabs that have already 
shed this year and have grown hard. The 
second class are the "pocket-books." as the 
fishermoji call thcni, crabs that will shed no 
more; and the third class are those which may 
shod their shells this year. For eating, the 
crab with a cream-white color upon the under- 
side is most esteemed. All the very large crabs 
are likely to be "pocket-books," but some that 
I have eaten wore quite as good as any of the 
white fellows. An expert can tell by squeez- 
ing the crab whether the shedding period is 
near. If within a few days of the time, the 
crab is put into a car with others supposed to 
bo in about tho same condition. It might be 
thought that soft-shelled crabs ought to be 
cheap if they can be hatched out in this easy 
fashion. The trouble is that eternal vigilance 
is tho price of tho soft-shell crab. Every 
fisherman has to watch his crabs night and day 
if he wishes to save his soft-shell crabs from 
being eaten by the other crabs. Until within 
five hours of the shedding, the crab retains his 
activity and voracit)-. when ho will fall upon 
anvthiui; eatable; then comes a period of 



With Fish-Lines and Nets 105 

stupor, and then the old shell is thrown off, 
leaving a perfect crab, one size larger, but soft 
and helpless. If all the other crabs in the box 
are not equally helpless, the new soft-shell fares 
no better than in Washington Market. My 
friend, the Cap'n, examines his crabs at six in 
the morning, at noon, at six o'clock at night, 
and often again at midnight, when he has a 
large number of "shedders " on hand. More- 
over, a crab gets hard so quickly that for market 
purposes he should be taken out of the car and 
packed in sea- weed the moment he sheds. In 
five hours after shedding, a crab, if left in 
water, becomes a "leather-back" and of no 
value, comparatively speaking. There is one 
man near us who, with the aid of his two boys, 
sends to market more than a hundred "soft- 
shells " a day in the season. The artificial 
propagation of crabs in shallow salt-water 
ponds has been tried here, but abandoned, 
owing to the regularity with which the crabs 
devour their young when they can catch them. 
Cooks seem to differ as to the right time 
which a crab should boil. Expert opinions vary 
from five minutes to half an hour. I am inclined 



io6 With Fish-Lines and Nets 

to think, after many experiments, that twenty 
minutes is none too long, and that half an 
hour's boiling does no harm. If the pail of 
crabs is lifted to the edge of the pot of boiling 
water, and slightly tilted, the crabs will walk 
to their own death upon hearing the bubble of 
the water. Thus it is pleasant to think that 
the crab's last impressions may have been a 
satisfaction to him ; the gurgle of water is in 
his ears as he takes the plunge, and before he 
discovers that he is not in the Great South Bay 
all things are indifferent to him. The change 
of color from dark-green and blue to cardinal- 
red takes place the moment after the crab is in 
boiling water, and is no indication that he is 
cooked. Those persons who know the cooked 
crab only have no conception of the superb 
coloring in green, turquoise-blue, and ivory- 
white which makes a live crab a thing of 
beauty. Crabs in market are so often cooked 
in order to keep them the better, that it is no 
wonder some people imagine that the crab 
goes through life in a scarlet coat. I saw last 
winter a game picture which had, among other 
things, a bright-red crab crawling off the dish. 



With Fish-Lines and Nets 107 

A friend of mine insists that in order to eat 
a crab with any comfort it is necessary to have 
at hand, besides the crab, a bowie-knife, a 
hammer, and a bucket of water. Others, 
equally ignorant, insist that there is nothing to 
eat in a crab. As a matter of fact, the opening 
of a crab can be made a pleasure, and there is 
really a great deal of delicious eating to be 
found. To begin with, the outfit for crab- 
eating should consist of nut-picks, nut-crackers, 
finger-bowls, and napkins. The big claws are 
easily broken open with the nut-crackers. The 
legs can be thrown away in times of plenty. 
To get at the inside of a crab with neatness 
and despatch, turn up the under breastplate 
and break it off. Then the whole back can be 
lifted off, exposing a good deal of a yellow, 
greenish substance, which is the fat of the crab 
and its best relish. Having the crab divested 
of underplate and back-shell, break it in two, 
and the white meat will be readily extracted 
Avith a nut-pick. The muscles which operate 
the crab's claws and legs constitute the meat. 
A little practice will convince any one that 
crabs are not to be despised. Their flavor is 



io8 With Fish-Lines and Nets 

incomparably finer than that of a lobster, while 
the scientific opening of a crab has all the 
charm of a surgical operation. 

To those who contend that crabs are deadly 
poison, especially if eaten after dark, I can only 
say that I have experimented upon myself and 
upon a number of other people's children with- 
out unpleasant results. A crab (cooked) is one 
of the favorite playthings of babies in this 
neighborhood. It is said that milk and crabs, 
when taken together, raise a tempest inside of 
one. Again I may say that I have experi- 
mented and escaped. The probability is, that 
people who eat crabs with vinegar and other 
rich sauces ought not to drink milk at the same 
time. 

How to handle a crab is a subject better 
taught by actual experience than by directions. 
It is not so difficult a matter as most people 
suppose, and the ladies who would no sooner 
meet a crab than some terrible beast of prey — 
say a mouse — are all wrong. I have known a 
whole earful of people utterly demoralised by 
a few poor timid little crabs. During the sum- 
mer some friends who went crabbing with me 



With Fish-Lines and Nets 109 

one day wanted to take a few fine specimens 
to New York. I packed them carefully in a 
basket, with sea-weed below and on top, and 
over all I tied a newspaper. It was dark when 
my friend and his wife reached the railway. 
He put the basket under the seat in the car and 
went to sleep. Just as he was dreaming that 
he had landed a crab as big as a porpoise, his 
wife awoke him with a tragic whisper : ''Harry, 
the crabs are out — one has just walked over my 
foot!" 

The situation was a critical one. The wet 
sea-weed had weakened the paper covering of 
the basket, and the crabs were coming forth 
in a solemn procession ; by the looks of the 
basket, at least twenty must have gone — some- 
where. My friend jammed a heavy shawl into 
the basket over what remained, and awaited 
developments in fear and trembling. They 
were not long in coming. A shriek from a 
lady at the other end of the car announced 
that one crab had made his presence felt. All 
was excitement in a moment. "She 's got 
heart disease," said one old gentleman; "stop 
the train and get a doctor." "Catch it, catch 



no With Fish-Lines and Nets 

it, it 's under my scat, it 's bitten my foot ! " 
cried the poor woman. My friend had to 
do something. "Ladies and gentlemen," he 
shouted, " it 's all right. A few little crabs that 
I had in a basket have escaped — that 's all." 
That was all, was it? Every woman in the car 
jumped shrieking upon the seats, and quiet 
was restored only when the last crab had been 
kicked off the rear platform by the brake- 
man. 

If taken properly, the crab is the most harm- 
less of dangerous beasts. Bear in mind that if 
you take a crab firmly where the hind-legs join 
his body, he cannot get at you with his nip- 
pers; also that any quick motion disconcerts 
the crab for the moment, and you will be 
master of the situation. By a little experi- 
menting you will find the exact place where a 
crab may safely be seized, and possibly some 
places where it is not safe. Rapid passes be- 
fore the eyes of a crab appear to paralyze him. 
If, therefore, you quickly turn him over and 
over until you see an opportunity of seizing 
him by the hind-leg close to the body, there is 
not one chance in five that the crab will get 



With Fish-Lines and Nets m 

hold of you before you get hold of him. After 
all, suppose he does get a nip now and then? — 
his revenge for ill-treatment is insignificant 
compared with what yours will be. 




WE GO A-FISHING 

AT daylight all was bustle and preparation 
for a fishing trip to Fire Island; one 
would think from the excitement of the chil- 
dren that we went fishing but once a year in- 
stead of once a week, and that the prospect of 
catching a fish was something altogether un- 
usual. I do not remember a more perfect 
morning. When Arthur and I started down to 
the boat to see that all was ready, an iridescent 
mist hung over the bay, and the distant high- 
lands down toward Fire Island were tipped 
with fire. The air was cool enough to make 
one relish the idea that the sun would be warm 
in a few hours, and there was enough promise 
of a breeze to warrant a start as soon as break, 
fast had been disposed of. It was a pleasure 
even to jump aboard the Nelly and get her 
ready for her thirty-mile trip. The man who 
does not love the water and a boat can scarcely 

112 



We Go A-Fishing 113 

understand such joy as this; but to me and to 
some people I know, a boat, and especially a 
sail-boat, is a never-failing source of pleasure. 
The fact that I have seen some pretty rough 
days in the Nelly, and that there have been 
times when I would not have wagered much 
upon my chances of getting her into port, seems 
rather to endear her to us; a boat that has 
stood a hundred gales, and has carried us thou- 
sands of miles, deserves something of gratitude 
in return. I cherish on the desk at which I 
now write a brass cleat from a little sail-boat I 
once owned ; it serves as a paper-weight, and 
as a reminder of scores of pleasure days. On 
one side of it is engraved the name of the boat, 
and on the other the date — "April-December, 
1880." When the time came for selling her, I 
retained this memento of many an exciting sail, 
and, as my wife would add, of many a hair- 
breadth escape. 

We hoisted the Nelly s sail to dry in the sun, 
and started back to breakfast. There were but 
few of the natives about the shore, but among 
those few I found my friend the Cap'n, who 
had been out to his nets, and had brought back 

8 



114 We Go A-Fishing 

a plentiful supply of "bunkers," which we 
could have as bait. These "bunkers" are the 
"bony-fish," or the menhaden of the oil fac- 
tories; when our bay fishermen take them in 
their nets, they are not thrown back, but are 
used as manure. As the Cap'n says, every 
"bunker" represents a good-sized potato to 
him. For a few cents we get a bucketful of 
them for bait. It is six o'clock by the time 
we get back to the house, to find the breakfast 
steaming on the table. Half an hour later we 
are off to the shore again, and before seven 
o'clock the Nelly is bowling along westward at 
the rate of five miles an hour. The village is 
still, to all intents and purposes, asleep, al- 
though the sun has begun to melt the mists, 
and the air has lost the keen sharpness of an 
hour before. As we glide along, all to the 
south of us, over towards the ocean, is one 
flood of golden light, with the low ridge of the 
sand hills standing out in shadow ; above these 
lines of sand dunes the morning sky is re- 
splendent, and between us and the beach the 
bay glitters with dancing sunbeams. On the 
other side we have the Long Island shore, with 



We Go A-Fishing 115 

its hills and woods, its farmhouses and hay- 
stacks. From our point of view, about a mile 
out in the bay, we can see the spires of half-a- 
dozen villages— Bellport, Patchogue, Bayport, 
and Sayville among them. The prevalent idea 
to the effect that Long Island is a flat stretch 
of sand, is one of the first impressions to dis- 
appear when one gets out upon the water here. 
There are no mountains, to be sure, but we 
have respectable hills, and when seen from the 
water in certain lights they give a mountainous 
background to the country along the shore. 
To get the full effect of these Long Island hills 
as an imposing background, one has to sail 
from the Great South Bay down to Moriches 
on just such a morning as this. Starting from 
Patchogue at five or even at six o'clock, if the 
wind is fair, the entrance to the narrow strait 
at Smith's Point is reached before the mists 
rise, and one gets a view of Moriches, which 
has reminded more than one person I know of 
a miniature Swiss landscape. The little village 
seems to nestle at the foot of a range of moun- 
tains, more or less imposing, according to the 
power of the sun upon the mists. Sailing out 



ii6 We Go A-Fishing 

of Patchogue, we could not imagine ourselves 
upon a Swiss lake, for the hills in the back- 
ground were too far off to dominate the town ; 
moreover, the air was better than ever blew 
over Lake Geneva. 

A fishing expedition to us who live nearly at 
the other end of the Great South Bay, means 
a day's trip, as a rule, and as usual we get 
fairly off before we begin to take stock of the 
necessaries that have been left behind. It is a 
twelve-mile sail to the cinder-beds, as our 
fishing-grounds are called, and as we are pretty 
sure to have to beat against the wind one way, 
it is called a thirty-mile sail there and back. 
There are five of us in the boat, not counting 
the children, and to two of our friends the trip 
is a novel one in every respect ; they had never 
been on the bay before, they had never seen a 
bluefish caught, and they had serious doubts 
as to whether a day on the water might not 
end in disaster. One of the ladies had braved 
the terrors of a thirty-mile sail, notwithstand- 
ing the fact that when she went last to Europe 
she was so sea-sick that "everything came out 
of her except her immortal soul." Sailing on 



We Go A- Fishing 117 

our bay is somewhat dangerous to sea-sick 
people, because it is so shallow that a breeze 
makes a sea in less time than it takes to tell it ; 
because the water is like a mill-pond in the 
morning is no promise that it may not be like 
the "raging main" by afternoon. Especially is 
this the case when the wind is from the north, 
I have recorded the results of a "norther" 
often enough to feel certain as to the day's 
weather on this water; when the water is 
smooth, and the north breeze comes in the 
morning like a zephyr, look out for a squally 
gale by noon — one of the worst winds we have 
for small boats. It will blow in gusts all day 
until the sun sinks, when it will die away, and 
the day will end as it began. 

As we sailed along I gave our friends some 
details as to the life upon the Great South Bay, 
its pleasures and its hardships, which may be 
resumed in a few pages and may possibly in- 
terest people who know little about this part 
of the coast and its sports. As between a life 
along the coast and a life in the hills, I have 
found by experience — my own and that of 
others — that success depends largely upon 



ii8 We Go A-Fishing 



temperament and constitution. There are 
people who cannot stand salt air, much as they 
love it ; and I have known earnest lovers of the 
sea and the coast to suffer such agonies from 
throat and lung troubles when living near the 
ocean, that no amount of pleasure to be de- 
rived from water sports could atone for these 
drawbacks. Every man should make a certain 
number of experiments in determining what 
part of the world, within certain limits, is best 
suited to his needs and purposes. People are 
too prone to settle down meekly wherever the 
Fates cast them. There comes a time in life 
when almost every man can (perhaps by a little 
sacrifice) cut loose from money-making work 
of a routine character and take some sort of 
what I should call rational employment in the 
open air, whether it be fishing, gardening, or 
hunting. When such a time comes, why 
should not the man who determines upon so 
important a change, look over the whole field? 
We have almost all conditions of climate and 
soil within a few days of us. I have known 
busy New Yorkers to cut loose from the bank 
or the business desk, and adopt life down on 



We Go A-Fishing 119 

the Chesapeake Bay ; others have taken to 
raising oranges in Florida ; some of my own 
relatives have been for years engaged in vine- 
yards and wine-making in California ; others, 
again, have taken to small fruits; still others 
have embarked in sheep-raising in northern 
Connecticut, and made it pay. I myself, per- 
haps from timidity, have settled down within 
a few miles of New York, for I find a good 
deal in favor of this sheet of water which con- 
stitutes our happy hunting-ground. 

The common idea that the Long Island coast 
is simply one long stretch of sand, varied by 
occasional patches of green in the shape of salt 
meadows, called marshes by city visitors, may 
be true so far as concerns the country within 
forty miles of New York. But beyond that 
there is a decided change. There are actually 
hills to be seen here and there; not very high 
ones, but high enough to be called hills. Most 
persons who have noticed on the maps the 
words "Shinnecock Hills" wonder what kind 
of country this may be, for at the point where 
the Shinnecock reservation is situated. Long 
Island is but a mere neck of land, at one point 



I20 We Go A-Fishing 

not more than a few hundred rods wide. The 
Shinnecock Indians at one time occupied this 
part of the island, and their descendants are 
still to be found. Along the coast, starting 
from a point forty miles from New York, there 
are hills to be seen even far more imposing 
than the famous Shinnecock range, which is 
in reality merely a collection of sand dunes, 
scantily covered with grass upon which sheep 
are pastured. The central range of hills, or 
the backbone of the island, is quite an impos- 
ing line when seen from the ocean, and even as 
viewed from the Great South Bay upon a misty 
morning it gives, as I have already said, quite 
an air of mountainous wilderness to the back- 
ground. In former days, when the Great 
South Bay and Shinnecock Bay were deep 
enough to afford navigation for good-sized 
schooners, it is probable that all this region 
stretching between Islip on the west and East 
Hampton on the east, was the scene of much 
more animation the year round than at present. 
We who resort here for quiet are rather glad 
of the change. Old ocean has helped us. It 
has played such tricks with this coast that it 



We Go A-Fishing 121 

seems to be only a matter of time when these 
bays will become wholly land-locked. Fifty 
years ago there was a large outlet to the 
ocean in the Great South Bay nearly opposite 
Patchogue, whereas now the boats have to go 
twenty miles farther down the bay to Fire 
Island inlet before they can go out into the 
ocean. Year after year, this Patchogue inlet 
grew narrower as each great storm washed up 
thousands of tons of sand. At last a great 
storm closed up the inlet, and it was only when 
the people went to work with shovels and carts 
that any communication between the bay and 
the ocean was maintained. For several years 
there was a day appointed, usually in the 
spring, when the farmers and fishermen within 
ten miles of Patchogue and Bellport were called 
upon to meet at the inlet and put in a day's 
work at digging. If the response to the call 
was a satisfactory one, the work of clearing 
out the channel to a depth of four or five feet 
right across the sand-bar took but a few hours; 
then, if there came up no great storm, such an 
inlet would last all summer, giving plenty of 
salt water to the bay. In the autumn the first 



122 We Go A-Fishing 



great storms of winter filled up the inlet, and 
in the spring the work had to be done all over 
again. About twenty-five years ago it became 
evident that the ocean was a far better work- 
man than the people of Patchogue, and was 
making it more and more difficult to keep up 
communication with the bay. As no vessels 
of any size could sail through this artificial 
ditch, the only use for it was to give salt water 
to the bay, and this benefited only the fisher- 
men. So the farmers objected to working for 
this purpose, and the inlet was allowed to be- 
come so choked up that to-day it would cost 
thousands of dollars and months of labor to cut 
an opening at the place where half a century 
ago vessels sailed through. 

In Shinnecock Bay, twenty-five miles farther 
along, exactly the same experience has been 
gone through within the last ten years; but 
the people of that neighborhood still keep up 
courage, and work at the inlet every spring, 
with the hope that nature will some day come 
to their assistance and restore the old chan- 
nels. The canal, which the government is now 
cutting through the neck of land separating 



We Go A-Fishing 123 

Shinnecock and Peconic bays, may create a 
current oceanward which will carry the sand 
out to sea. The reason for this greater activity 
upon the part of the Shinnecock people is that 
without communication with the ocean, Shin- 
necock Bay would soon become a fresh-water 
and a very unhealthy pond. Even now it is 
impossible to grow clams in Shinnecock Bay, 
once the best clamming spot along the coast, 
because the water is not salt enough, and if 
the canal does not help matters, the time is 
not far distant when, notwithstanding the 
yearly cleaning-out of the inlet, all fish and 
oysters will disappear. 

At the upper end of the Great South Bay 
the effect of filling up the inlets communicat- 
ing with the ocean has been felt chiefly by the 
fishermen. As there is no communication with 
the ocean, no sand of any consequence is thrown 
into the bay by winter storms. For the last 
twenty-five years the bottom of the Great 
South Bay has undergone no changes, and 
the soundings made by the government many 
years ago are still trustworthy. In the great 
storms of winter the spray of the ocean some- 



124 We Go A-Fishing 

times washes into the bay, rolling over the 
sand-bar, but the agitation of the water in the 
bay is not sufficient to cause the sand to shift. 
We have still a depth of from four to seven 
feet right up to the end of the bay, with long 
stretches of shallow flats, sometimes covered 
with grass, in which the ducks take shelter and 
feed in winter. These fiats extend along the 
sand-bar from one to two miles into the bay, 
and any one who has sailed for a summer or 
two in the bay learns pretty well how to keep 
clear of them by the looks of the water. Along 
the main shore there is plenty of water for from 
two to three miles out from the shore, and this 
makes the bay a superb sailing-place for small 
boats. As for the fishing part, it has grown 
less and less, until to-day it is not what might 
be called a good fishing-ground, except within 
a few miles of Fire Island inlet, where the 
bluefish still run in the right season. Perhaps 
the number of fishermen has had something to 
do with the scarcity of fish. The fame of Fire 
Island inlet has spread so far among lovers of 
bluefish that not a day passes from late June 
until late September when there cannot be 



We Go A-Fishing 125 

found a fleet of from twenty to two hundred 
boats on the lookout for bluefish. The fishing 
industry of Babylon is entirely devoted to 
taking out parties for bluefishing; the profes- 
sional fisherman scarcely professes to fish at 
all. His duty is to keep his smack in order, 
to furnish bait and lines, and to be ready to 
pilot his patrons to the best place in the bay for 
a catch. Whether fish are caught or not, the fish- 
erman gets his dollars, and finds it more profit- 
able to take people fishing than to fish himself. 

Oysters, of course, have remained one of the 
great resources of the Great South Bay. The 
famous Blue Point, so named because of the 
blue tint of the weeds which formerly covered 
the point, still remains the ideal spot of this 
region for oyster-dredging, and when the sum- 
mer visitor runs away frightened by the first 
September storm, the oysterman takes off the 
fancy trimmings of his boat, stores away the 
awnings, camp chairs, and cushions, and pre- 
pares for hard work. In reality, the first two 
months of oystering are what is to me the 
pleasantest time of the year. Once the Sep- 
tember gales have abated, the weather settles 



126 We Go A-Fishing 

down into glorious days, and from early Octo- 
ber until Christmas the Blue Point oysterer has 
an existence which might be envied by any 
one fond of outdoor exercise. On such days as 
these, the bay, calm and peaceful, is given up 
to its rightful owners. The summer visitors 
have disappeared. The smacks of the fisher- 
men have resumed their working appearance, 
the duck-shooters have begun to sound the 
alarm along the coast, and from sunrise to sun- 
set, the air, whether it comes from the ocean 
or from the pine woods of the Long Island 
plains, is full of a fragrance which cannot be 
found in the neighborhood of great cities. 
People talk about the sufferings of the oyster- 
men, and we hear a good deal about frozen 
hands, night work, and perilous adventures. 
As a matter of fact, although I have followed 
the doings of the bay oystermen with consider- 
able interest, I have found no evidences of ex- 
ceptional hardship. It is cold work sometimes, 
but as compared to the work of a city car- 
driver it is sport. Although each oyster smack 
has a comfortable little cabin warmed by a 
stove, it is a common sight to see the oyster- 



We Go A-Fishing 127 

men eating their dinners in the sunlight on 
deck rather than keep to the cabin on a bluster- 
ing December day. The worst that can be said 
of the life of the professional oysterman is that 
it does not pay, and even this may be called in 
question. The crew of a smack devoted to 
fishing in the bay, whether for "bony-fish" for 
the oil factories, or for oysters, usually consists 
of two men and a boy ; the boy sails the boat, 
while the men attend to the nets or the dredges. 
The smack is worth from $600 to $1200, ac- 
cording to size and appointment. I have 
known the profits of a season, which begins in 
June and ends when the bay freezes over in 
January, to be $2500 for one smack. The 
fishing lasts till October, when the oystering 
begins. The boats are usually owned by the 
men who sail them, and the boy who goes as 
sailor gets a percentage of the catch, whether 
of fish or of oysters. One young fellow who 
sailed in a Patchogue smack last summer got 
$600 as the returns of his summer's work. 

To-day, as the morning breeze dies away 
about ten o'clock, leaving us in the middle of 
the bay, two miles from land on either side, it 



128 We Go A-Fishing 

seems hard to believe that within a few weeks 
the oystermen will be blowing on their fingers 
and swinging their arms, and that the duck- 
shooters will be ranging this very spot. The 
water is so warm that it is still full of jelly-fish, 
which the children catch with a scalp net as 
we glide slowly along. Half an hour later the 
breeze dies out entirely, and the boom swings 
from one side to the other, the sail flapping 
idly. No amount of whistling brings a breeze. 
It is hot and still. The buzzing of an occa- 
sional fly and noises from the distant shore are 
faintly heard ; the barking of dogs and the 
hammering of some carpenters are very dis 
tinct. As the little air moving comes from 
the shore, we cannot hear the boom of the surf 
on the other side of us. The cinder-beds, our 
fishing-grounds, are still five miles away. By 
watching the bottom, a few feet below us, we 
estimate that the boat is moving at the rate of 
one yard a minute, at which pace we shall get 
there sometime next year. This is part of 
fisherman's luck, and the man who should feel 
resentment or show impatience in such circum- 
stances has no business to go fishing on the 



We Go A-Fishing 129 

Great South Bay, or anywhere else. We have 
books with us, we have hopes of a breeze to 
come and fish to be caught. 

The true fisherman enjoys fishing whether he 
catches fish or not. The love of fishing is 
much akin to the love of gambling; whether 
you win or lose there is pleasurable excitement 
about it. It is the hope of getting something 
for nothing, so to speak, and your true fisher- 
man will sit upon the edge of a boat or the 
string-piece of a wharf all day, content to be 
there and meditate upon what he might have 
caught or may yet catch. The best fishermen 
I know are the old fellows who dangle their legs 
over the edge of the Paris quays waiting for 
goujons to bite — little fish half the size of a 
herring; and the catch of a round half-dozen 
makes a red-letter day for the Seine fishermen. 
I remember a picture of two of these enthusi- 
asts going home in a pelting rain with an empty 
creel between them. They have been out all 
day and are drenched to the skin. One says : 
"What a glorious sport this fishing is! What 
would life be without it?" "Yes, indeed," 

responds the other, "I shall never forget that 
9 



130 We Go A-Fishing 

nibble as long as I live!" This is the true 
spirit in which to fish. 

I was pretty sure that upon so clear and 
cloudless a day there would be wind after the 
sun passed the meridian, and, sure enough, 
the breeze began to come clear and cold from 
the ocean before one o'clock. It was a good 
breeze to take us home, and so we determined 
to push on for a few miles more for the sake of 
trying the bluefish on the cinder-beds. The 
enjoyment and refreshment of a cold wind after 
the sultry stagnation under a hot sun was re- 
ward enough for our previous discomfort, and 
the spirits of the party rose as the boom swung 
over to starboard and we started again for Fire 
Island, headed down the bay. Luncheon was 
got out, and we munched our sandwiches and 
prepared the tackle for fishing. 

With the breeze a haze also spread over the 
horizon. South of us we had the Fire Island 
coast, which is here splendidly wooded with 
scrub oak and is dotted at long intervals with 
the summer-houses of people who care less for 
society than for nature. We were sailing 
within half a mile of the island. Back of us 



We Go A-Fishing 131 

Patchogue was lost in the mist. The breeze 
grew fresher and fresher. The waves began to 
rise, and it was as lively sailing as any one 
could want when we reached the little fleet of 
fishing-boats lying on the cinder-beds and cast 
out our anchor. We were late for the right 
tide, but as the crews of the other boats re- 
ported the fishing to be fair, we decided to try 
it. With such a breeze it would be less than 
a two hours' sail home, and it was not yet two 
o'clock. We should have time for an hour's 
fishing, for half an hour's run on shore in order 
to rest the children, and then we could make 
sail for home with a fresh wind at our stern for 
a ten miles' run. 

The routine of our bluefishing I have de- 
scribed elsewhere. Fish are a secondary con- 
sideration. If we catch any, well and good; 
if not, we have had a pretext for sailing thirty 
miles and idling away the day in the most 
profitable way imaginable. "L'Art de ne Rien 
Faire " is after all one of the most dif^cult of 
arts. Nature and the animals flourish in idle- 
ness. But man is supposed to deteriorate when 
not engaged in producing things, or robbing 



132 We Go A-Fishing 

his neighbors in the finesses of trade. If, be- 
cause of the vicious warp inherited from ances- 
tors who deified work for its own sake, we feel 
uncomfortable at the idea that we are sailing 
the Great South Bay from morning till night 
with no dollars in view, we may perhaps quiet 
our utilitarian instincts by this pretext of fish- 
ing. We are trying to obtain food for the 
family ; we may not have hoed any corn or 
dug any potatoes, or written any articles which 
editors may be willing to pay for, but we have 
tried to provide food for the household, and 
our conscience is clear. It may be said that 
this is but a subterfuge, for if I had stayed at 
my desk cudgelling my brains for ideas of 
merchantable value, I should have earned 
enough money to buy bluefish for the whole 
summer. This may be true, and yet I do not 
admit the force of any such reasoning. The 
mere ability to earn enough money to keep 
one's family decently sheltered, fed, and 
clothed is the most ordinary ability in the 
world ; the man who fails to do it is either ex- 
tremely unfortunate or uncommonly incom- 
petent. He is the exception. We should aim 



We Go A-Fishing 133 

to accomplish something more than what every 
one does. We should endeavor to eat our 
cake and keep it too. I am led to say all this 
in order to explain why it was that we did not 
give way to dejection when we discovered, after 
a throw or two of the lines, that the tide had 
turned and that there were no fish to be had. 
The other boats had begun to raise their 
anchors and were taking advantage of the fine 
southwesterly breeze to spread their wings for 
home. It was a question whether the wind 
would last until sundown or not. So the fish- 
ing was abandoned, and we sailed over to the 
wharfs near the oil-factories for a run on shore. 
By the time that the last of the fishermen 
had made sail for home, we took up the tail of 
the procession. No more splendid breeze could 
be desired — straight from the southwest and 
without a flaw. With our centreboard up we 
cared not for flats — there was enough water for 
us, — and our course was laid straight for home. 
Everything in the east was hazy, and it looked 
as if rain might be falling in the neighborhood 
of Montauk Point, for the sun was painting 
resplendent pictures upon the banks of clouds. 



134 We Go A-Fishing 

Two hours later we swung around among our 
little Patchogue fleet and made fast to shore. 
The wind had gone down with the sun ; the 
bay was like a mirror, and we could hear the 
oars of people becalmed a mile from home. 




MY BEES 

AS I have already said elsewhere, my bees 
have contributed a few dollars a year to 
my income, and have given me a great many 
pounds of honey and no little amusement. 
Some five or six years ago a newspaper para- 
graph concerning the large amount of money to 
be made by raising bees and selling their honey 
caught my eye, and I had the curiosity to look 
up the only firm in this part of the country 
which at that time made a business of selling 
hives fitted out with bees. My investigation 
resulted in the purchase of a hive containing a 
swarm of pure Italian honey-bees warranted to 
do justice to their reputation as indefatigable 
workers, and to make my fortune if I looked 
after them with intelligence and perseverance. 
The people from whom I bought my first hive 
were full of information as to the vast amount 
of honey and, of course, profit I was to get 
135 



136 My Bees 

from my investment ; they said nothing about 
a vast number of stings. According to the 
rosy picture which was drawn of my future, I 
should merely have to buy my hives and hire a 
convenient place in which to store the honey 
as it was produced by the ton. I was told that 
any neighborhood where vegetation throve was 
good for bees, and that an able-bodied man 
could take care of two hundred hives with ease 
and live in comfort upon the products of his 
little servants. The details of the business 
were said to be easy to learn, and its prosecu- 
tion one long delight. In support of this 
story, I was presented with several works by 
men who had kept bees and were impelled from 
the enthusiasm which filled them to tell the 
world how much money and joy might be 
found in bee-keeping. One man went so far 
as to give the actual amounts which he had 
made in a few years, with fac-similes of the 
checks he had received in payment for his 
enormous shipments. According to his ac- 
count, bee-keeping was the easiest, pleasantest, 
and most profitable of all employments; all 
the bee-keeper had to do was to take out the 



My Bees 137 

honey from the hive and sell it to the mis- 
guided people who keep no hives of their own. 
Another little book told of a bright young city 
man who gave up the delights of the theatre and 
base-ball matches to retire to the country with a 
hive of bees ; he emerged five years later with 
something like a fortune made out of honey. 

The first supply was to be the only cost 
of the enterprise beyond that of the hives 
in which to place other swarms, and the little 
boxes which are put in the hives to receive the 
honey. I was assured that very few people 
who took hold of the business gave it up be- 
cause of the stings they received, and that, if I 
could take the opinion of all bee-keepers upon 
the subject, I would find that it was virtually a 
chorus of praise in honor of this industry, which 
is almost literally as old as the hills, and yet 
has been completely revolutionized, turned up- 
side down, within the last twenty years. For 
centuries people had gone on allowing bees to 
do as they thought fit. Twenty years ago an 
inventive genius discovered that the bees knew 
nothing about making the most of their time, 
and were living a life of riotous idleness. 



138 My Bees 

It is some five years since, thus induced to 
consider the bee business as something which of- 
fered me exactly what I wanted — a life of ease, 
with nothing to do and plenty of money, — I 
paid $15 for my hive stocked with bees, $1 for a 
veil to put over my head, $2 for a pair of rubber 
gloves, and several dollars more for various im- 
plements to be used, as I found out afterwards, 
in fighting the infuriated insects. My bill for 
the original outfit was $20 and some cents, ac- 
cording to the accounts of the business, which 
I have kept with great care, and which are now 
before me. During these five years I have had 
an experience worth all the money paid out, 
and as there may be some other people anxious 
for a life of ease and plenty of money, my ex- 
perience may not be without interest and profit 
to them. Seriously, I have not had a bad time 
of it, and for the number of hours and the 
amount of money which I have devoted to my 
bees, I am inclined to congratulate myself over 
the result, and to advise others to at least make 
the experiment of keeping a few hives. I have 
never thought of honey-making as anything 
but the amusement of idle hours in the coun- 



My Bees 139 

try, and I first gave time and thought to bee- 
raising very much as I might to chicken-raising 
or any other hobby of the city man who has 
only a few hours in the country which he does 
not devote to sleep. 

My first hive was bought when I was living 
in the Orange Mountains of New Jersey, about 
twenty miles from New York. It arrived by 
express, the top of the hive covered with wire- 
cloth, through which the bees peered rather 
curiously but not at all viciously. The direc- 
tions were to take off the wire-cloth as carefully 
as possible, and put on a large wooden cover. 
As the construction of a modern beehive is 
radically different from that of the old-fashioned 
straw one, I may as well say a few words about 
it. The essential part of a modern hive con- 
sists of a wooden box eighteen inches wide, 
two feet long, and about fourteen inches deep. 
This box contains from eight to ten "frames," 
which are filled up with a sheet of comb of the 
average thickness. These sheets of comb, 
sometimes partly filled with honey by the 
bees, hang side by side in the hive, and usually 
occupy the whole of the box. It is possible to 



I40 My Bees 

lift out any one of the frames and see exactly 
what is going on upon the sheet of comb it 
contains. The same sheet may be partly given 
up to honey, or may contain young bees in the 
various stages of growth from the egg to the 
live bee. In the spring there is usually very 
little honey left in the hive, the bees having 
eaten it all during the winter, and filled up the 
empty cells with eggs, fast becoming bees. 
The frames of the hives are not often disturbed 
by the beginner in bee-hiving, since the bees 
are apt to resent this investigation into their 
private apartments. Above the box containing 
the frames comes a cover, which is sufficiently 
high to allow a number of honey-boxes to be 
placed right on top of the frames. These 
honey-boxes are easily contained in a large 
case, which enables them all to be put on or 
lifted off together. In this case there are from 
twenty to thirty boxes to be filled by the bees. 
In some hives boxes for honey are also placed 
in the lower part of the hive along the outside 
walls, when the bees will often fill them in 
preference to going up into the cover of the 
hives. 



My Bees 141 

In the old-fashioned hives it was necessary to 
kill the bees by suffocating them with sulphur 
smoke before the honey could be cut out of 
the hive. In the new hives, if I may so call the 
hives which date from twenty years ago, the 
bees are never much disturbed when honey is 
taken out of the hive; the idea of killing bees 
in order to get honey would now be considered 
atrocious barbarism. The modern method of 
taking the honey-boxes out of the hives is 
simply to drive the bees from the boxes down 
to their own frames by the use of the smoke 
of rags, when the boxes may be lifted off with- 
out injuring the bees. About five hundred 
patents have been taken out within the last 
twenty years for improved beehives, and the 
farmers in some parts of the country have been 
so annoyed by the claims of people who pre- 
tend to own patent rights upon hives which 
they had puchased, that the rapacity of these 
hive inventors has driven many of them out of 
the business. The moment a man bought what 
seemed to be a sensible and cheap hive, he was 
called upon to pay royalties to some one who 
claimed the patent. The number of different 



142 My Bees 

hives, each type having its champions, is a very 
large one, and almost every well-known bee- 
keeper has left a hive of his own devising which 
is expected to do something that other hives 
will not do. It has been found by long ex- 
perience that bees are very accommodating in- 
sects, and will adapt themselves to almost any 
variety of home, provided it is sufficiently dark 
and secure from the attacks of animals. 

My first year's experience consisted in open- 
ing the hives every day or two, after suffocat- 
ing all the bees with five times the necessary 
amount of smoke, and studying what was going 
on inside. This effectually prevented the bees 
from making any honey, but it gave me some 
insight into their habits, and a very perfect 
knowledge of the treatment of stings. As to 
honey, the first year was only a partial success. 
The very day after the beehive arrived and had 
been put in place, I put over the frames every 
honey-box that came with the hive, and watched 
for the result. In one of my books it is re- 
corded that a swarm of bees will sometimes 
bring in as much as twenty pounds of honey 
in one day ; my bees had evidently never read 



My Bees 143 

this book. I could not find that they brought 
in an ounce unless for their own use. After 
some weeks of anxious watching and disap- 
pointment, I consulted a neighbor, who knew 
somebody else whose brother had once had a 
beehive, and in the end I discovered that an 
old farmer ten miles off had some bees, and 
actually got some honey from them every year. 
I went to see him, and found out that in that 
part of Jersey, at least, bees do very little in 
the way of honey-making from the end of June 
until the end of August ; moreover, that if I 
want to get them to make honey in the little 
boxes which are sold by the grocers, I should 
have to encourage them by placing in each box 
a little sheet of wax marked with the comb in- 
dentations. These wax "starters " are the in- 
vention of a German bee-keeper. I also learned 
that, in order to get the bees to do their whole 
duty, a modern device, likewise the invention 
of a German, known as an "extractor," would 
be necessary. 

The extractor is simply a tin barrel contain- 
ing a frame which can be made to whirl around 
upon a central pivot. Into this frame the hive 



144 My Bees 

combs, when they contain honey, are placed, 
and made to revolve so rapidly that the honey 
is forced out of the comb by centrifugal action 
and trickles down to the bottom of the ex- 
tractor. Before bees begin to store honey in 
the little boxes in the top of the hive, they 
first fill up such parts of the large frames as are 
not used by them for rearing young; and the 
motion of the extractor is so regulated that the 
eggs and young bees are not thrown out with 
the honey. The comb having been emptied of 
the honey, the frame is replaced in the hive, 
and the bees, finding their stores gone and 
fearing starvation, will go to work again with 
the energy of despair. Some bee-keepers use 
their bees entirely for producing this extracted 
honey, and never make any box-honey, as the 
honey in the comb is called. The sale of ex- 
tracted honey, put up in bottles, is naturally 
larger than that of box-honey, as it can be kept 
in better order and for a longer time ; but its 
price is less by several cents a pound, and the 
temptation to adulterate it with sugar and 
water has given it a bad reputation in some 
communities. As yet no one has found a 



My Bees 145 

method of making artificial comb and filling it 
with artificial honey. A dealer in honey said 
to me one day: "These rascals who adulterate 
honey with glucose are ruining our business in 
extracted honey. Fortunately, they cannot 
imitate comb-honey. It has been tried, but 
does not succeed; I would give $io,cxx) to find 
a good method of doing it." So much for 
business virtue. The only way in which 
adulteration comes into play with comb-honey 
is in the practice of feeding the bees upon 
glucose or maple-sugar and water, which mix- 
ture they, of course, store up in the boxes and 
"cap" over in the usual way, as if it was genu- 
ine honey from flowers. 

The internal economy of a beehive, with its 
thousands of workers, its drones, and its one 
queen, has been described so often in print 
that I need not waste space upon it. A good 
beehive, well-filled, contains about 25,000 bees. 
My first beehive had about 5000 when it came 
to me, but reached the maximum before the 
end of the autumn. When the queen lays 
eggs, she does so at the rate of several hundred 
a day, and in less than three weeks the bees 



146 My Bees 

from these eggs are flying around. Much has 
been said of late as to the superiority of the 
Italian bee, which carries three yellow bands 
upon its body, over the native black bee, and 
as high as $50 have been paid for a good Italian 
queen. Means have been devised of so pack- 
ing queens that they often come from Europe 
by mail, and are sent all over the country in 
the same way. The average price for a good 
queen is at present one dollar. At the end of 
my first summer's experience in the bee busi- 
ness, and after allowing my bees to take care 
of themselves for the six weeks from the middle 
of September to the end of October, I found 
that I had twelve pounds of honey stored up 
in boxes, and that the nine frames of the lower 
part of the hive were completely full of honey 
and weighed eight pounds apiece. I took out 
three of the frames which were filled and left 
in six for the winter, thus giving the bees 
nearly fifty pounds of honey to live upon. 
The preparation for winter in Jersey is simply 
to take off the top and side boxes, filling up 
the void with sawdust ; I left the hive out-of- 
doors, and I have followed the same plan in 



My Bees i47 

Connecticut with success. In northern New 
England and in the northwestern States, where 
the thermometer often falls below zero, it is 
customary to winter the hives in cellars. 

After a pretty severe winter I discovered in 
the first sunshiny days of March that my bees 
were coming out of the hive freely, and taking 
a warm day for investigation, I lifted out a 
frame to find it full of "brood," as the bees 
not yet out of the cell are called. As the 
spring advanced the hive became more and 
more lively, and when the willows blossomed 
the noise of my bees could be heard fifty feet 
away ; apparently I had twice as many bees as 
in the autumn, and I looked forward to a tre- 
mendous crop of honey. Authorities upon 
the bee business say that the average product 
of a good hive ought to be sixty pounds of 
honey a year. Some bee-keepers boast of 
having obtained one hundred pounds, and the 
farmer who still keeps bees in a common 
wooden box, provided with no movable frames, 
is satisfied with twenty-five or thirty pounds. 
May came, and I filled my hives with boxes 
fitted out with wax "starters." The hive ap- 



148 My Bees 

peared to be crowded with bees, so much so 
that early in May a tremendous swarm came 
out one day, and after hanging to a cedar tree 
for some hours, went off to find new quarters ; 
I was away in the city and lost it. Swarming 
is nothing more or less than a sign that the hive 
is too small for the family. The queen goes 
off with a certain number of the bees to find a 
new home, but not without leaving things in 
such a state that a new queen will be hatched 
out in a few days. Within ten days of the loss 
of my first swarm, another one appeared on a 
Sunday, and I found it without difificulty hang- 
ing to a small cedar tree. I put the cover on 
an old soap-box, and bored two or three holes 
in one side of the box with an auger. Then I 
put it on the ground near my first hive, care- 
fully cut off the small limb upon which my 
swarm had clustered, and laid the black mass 
down in front of the soap-box, within an inch 
or two of the auger-holes. The bees made a 
straight line for these openings, tumbling over 
one another in their anxiety to get in. In half 
an hour the last one entered. The next day I 
bought an empty hive in town. Upon opening 



My Bees 149 

my soap-box to get the bees into the new hive, 
which I did within forty-eight hours, I found 
that they had already begun making comb and 
the queen had begun to lay eggs. I made the 
transfer without difficulty. During this second 
year my two hives gave me between them 
forty-seven pounds of honey in boxes, and 
thirty-two pounds of honey which I cut from 
the frames. I found that the best honey 
season in that part of the country was not in 
the spring, but in the late autumn, the golden- 
rod affording most of the supply. At the close 
of the second summer I prepared the bees as 
usual and left them out in the snow for the 
winter. 

In May following I increased my number of 
hives to four by taking out half of the bees in 
each of my two hives and putting them into 
new hives. The process is too complicated for 
description here; every bee-book gives a de- 
tailed account of how to do it. I succeeded 
perfectly. From my two old hives came a 
swarm apiece, both of which I succeeded in 
catching. This gave me six hives. The third 
year resulted in a harvest of 120 pounds in 



150 My Bees 

boxes and 90 pounds in the frames. The result 
was not so good as it might have been had 
I watched the hives carefully enough to deter- 
mine exactly when the frames ought to have 
been emptied of their contents by the use of an 
extractor. I have never taken the trouble to 
get an extractor at all, preferring to work en- 
tirely for box-honey. Also, I did not take out 
my boxes as fast as they were filled, and this 
had something to do with the work of the bees, 
who do their best when starvation threatens 
them. For the fourth year, inasmuch as six 
hives were simply flooding me and my neigh- 
bors with honey, I neglected to hive the swarms 
at all, and simply let them go, knowing that 
more honey would mean a serious amount of 
time taken in looking after the hives and in 
selling the honey. The last year has given me 
no less than 280 pounds of honey in boxes and 
160 pounds in the frames. Half of this honey 
has been sold at an average price of fourteen 
cents a pound, which is about two thirds of 
the price obtained for it by the local grocer to 
whom I sold it. 

To sum up the results of my experiments in 



My Bees 151 

bcc-culturc, I have six hives completely filled 
with bees and ready for the winter, which have 
cost me in all $46, including the original out- 
lay. During the five years I have spent exactly 
eighty cents in food for the bees ; when the 
spring is very late, they sometimes require to 
be helped along with a little candy. I estimate 
the value of my plant at $100, and my honey 
which remains for the winter's consumption at 
$T)0. The time necessary to look after and 
take care of six hives is certainly not more than 
three hours a week, and the number of stings 
received depends upon the caution and skill of 
the bee-keeper. I have found that it is not 
necessary to be stung at all, and that even 
when a few bees do manage to sting, it is not 
a very serious matter. Any man who wants a 
most interesting hobby can find no end of in- 
terest and some honey by getting a beehive 
and putting it on the roof, even if he lives in 
the city. Some years ago one of our down- 
town janitors, who kept a small apiary on the 
top of a big ofifice building, had to give it up 
because a neighboring candy-shop on Broadway 
complained of the clouds of bees which the 



IS- My Bees 

candy attracted. With judicious nuiuagcmcat 
one hive oui;ht to Liivc etiough honey for a 
family, and to require ahnost no attention. 
l>ees will \\y tour miles in search of honey, so 
that our New York City bees jijet most of their 
supplies in Jersey or over on Long Island. 
At one time a few years ago California honey 
seemetl about to dri\ e our Eastern bees out of 
the business. Since theu. however, there has 
beei\ a reaction, and our honey is preferred for 
its flavor, and higher prices are paid for it. 
One bee-keeper of Cherry Valley, New York, 
exports yearly to England $.:5,ocx) worth of 
honey raised b\- his own bees. I am now 
about to move my bees down to my Long 
Island home, luiving found that there are thriv- 
ing apiaries in the neighborhood and plenty of 
buckwheat and golden-rod for their sustenance. 
If 1 cannot get several hundred pounds of 
hot\ey ever\- year to offset m\- grocer\- bill I 
shiill be dis.ippointed. 



"DEAD TREES LOVE THE FIRE" 

I AM sorry for the man who cannot get 
pleasure out of a wood fire. One of the 
promising signs of the times, according to my 
view, is the reappearance of the open hearth in 
most of our modern country-houses. If the 
testhetic movement in house-building leaves us 
no other memento of its passage than the big 
open hearth and the andirons of our fore- 
fathers, we can afford to be llianl^ful, for its 
sins arp as nothing as compared to this bless- 
ing. Twenty years ago, one could find all over 
the country noble old houses in which the big 
fireplace had been bricked up in order to sub- 
stitute a grate for coal, or, what is worse, a 
pipe-hole for a stove. With the better senti- 
ment of the last few years, the fortunate people 
who own such houses have had the bricks torn 
down and the old andirons rescued from the 
attic. At my own fireside I have a pair of 
153 



154 "Dead Trees Love the Fire" 

andirons that have been in use in the family 
for more than a hundred and fifty years, and 
it is no small pleasure to dream of the people, 
long since dead and gone, who have watched 
the flames reflected in those burnished brass 
relics of the olden time. The man who has 
not learned to love a log fire has missed one of 
the comforts of life ; it is the love of a fire 
which has kept me from moving to Florida or 
some country where vegetation and gardens 
flourish the year round. Fond as I am of 
working among growing things, and eagerly as 
I look forward year after year to the first dan- 
delion, I cannot bear the idea of losing my 
noble blaze and the peculiar odor which a log 
fire, especially of pine wood, gives to a room 
when the winter blast outside sends an occa- 
sional whiff of smoke and flame down the 
chimney. Along with the petty miseries of 
life in large cities I should be inclined to place 
the absence of a wood fire, for even if there is 
a big fireplace, which is not always the case in 
a city house of the ordinary type, wood is too 
dear to allow of its use as I understand it. I 
want a fire of logs a foot through and four feet 



**Dead Trees Love the Fire" 155 

long, which burns from morning till late at 
night, which throws out light enough to do 
without lamps until the dinner-bell rings, and 
I am sure that the children who grow up with 
the remembrance of that firelight hour before 
their bedtime will be the better for it. It will 
inculcate in them a love of something healthy, 
spiritually and physically. Thoreau says : 
"Dead trees love the fire." 

Of all the woods that we burn upon our big 
hearth in winter, the balsam pine knots are the 
most precious, because they send out an aro- 
matic odor through the room somewhat akin to 
that of sandalwood. Often, when the gale 
does not send us a whiff of smoke backing 
down the chimney, I take a pine knot out of 
the fire with the tongs and wave it through the 
room for the sake of getting that peculiar scent, 
which has always seemed full of medicinal 
properties. In order to get pine knots of the 
kind I want, we make two or three trips every 
summer to a wooded headland within six miles 
of us, where for a trifle the owner has given me 
the privilege of cutting down a lot of old pines 
that are fit for nothins; but firewood or fence 



15^ "Dead Trees Love the Fire" 

posts. These firewood expeditions are hailed 
with delight by the children, because each one 
constitutes a sort of picnic for them. Yester- 
day was one of our firewood days, and we got 
off by a glorious morning soon after seven 
o'clock, taking, of course, all the children and 
a friend with us. As we marched down to the 
boat, our axes, fishing-poles, and oars over our 
shoulders, we met the first stage starting from 
our little hotel for the railroad station, full of 
unfortunate business men bound to New York 
for another week's heat, worry, fatigue, and 
money. I suppose that every one of them 
hoped to make at least one hundred dollars 
by the week's work, for life is expensive when 
one has a large family and boards at the coun- 
try inn. That would be about fifteen dollars a 
day. I was going to earn enough firewood, or 
rather enough pine knots, to give a balsamic 
scent to our fires for half the winter. Probably 
I could have hired a man to go and do the 
work for me and bring back more wood than I 
should require, all for three or four dollars. If 
money is the object of life, then my conscience 
ought to prick me to the quick as we nod good- 



"Dead Trees Love the Fire" 157 

bye to the money-makers and keep on down to 
the bay. There is but little breeze stirring, 
scarcely enough to send us along. Neverthe- 
less, up goes the sail, the children throwing 
aboard their baskets and bags containing the 
luncheon, and we cast off, prepared for a good 
day's outing. 

It sometimes occurs to me whether there 
may not be such a thing as the cultivation of 
idleness — whether the love of idleness does not 
grow by idleness. Many people have told me 
that the normal man needs to work in order to 
be healthy and happy, and by work they mean 
money-making of some kind. This giving a 
whole day to going after a quarter of a cord of 
pine knots would be looked upon as a peculiarly 
vicious idleness because of the specious attempt 
to dissimulate. I remember many years ago, 
when quite a young man, that chance threw 
me out of business for several months, and as 
it happened I employed most of my time in 
stripping a superb orchard of its apples and 
barrelling them for sale in the city. I forget 
exactly what the venture netted me in money. 
The apples were going to waste and I invested 



158 ''Dead Trees Love the Fire" 

the necessary money in empty barrels and 
freight charges. The work, I did myself, be- 
ginning before breakfast and stopping when it 
grew too dark to tell a good apple from a bad 
one. Then I went back to routine work at my 
own profession. But in after years the memory 
of that apple picking became a delight. I 
often spoke of it to friends, only to be told 
that no one but the laziest of men would think 
of wasting months in an apple orchard. Per- 
haps as a business investment such work might 
pay the wages of a day laborer, but it was un- 
worthy of a man who could earn ten or twenty 
dollars a day by writing newspaper articles or 
trading in lead pipe or leather. Moreover, I 
was assured that had I kept on for a few 
months longer at such work, it would have filled 
me with profound discontent and a wild desire 
to get back to the city at any cost. I was as- 
sured that for any man above the rustic lout, 
the country and all its occupations would be in- 
tolerable except as a recreation for a few weeks 
of the year, unless there was plenty of money 
wherewith to live a life of absolute idleness and 
watch others work. It has always been taken 



"Dead Trees Love the Fire" 159 

for granted by these good friends of mine that 
this is so self-evident as to require no argu- 
ment. The man who wants to earn bread and 
butter for his family must work in the city. 
Yet all these years I have retained a sneaking 
fondness for the belief that years of work in an 
apple orchard might not result disastrously for 
me or mine. I recall the fact that during those 
three months I was never better in health, that 
I never took greater pleasure in my books and 
papers, that I never looked upon life with 
more satisfaction. And this accidental taste 
of country life at a profit of a dollar or two a 
day, a small sum as compared to my city earn- 
ings, had great influence in my determination 
to cut loose from the city for a large part of 
the year. 

To come back to the Great South Bay it was 
as smooth as a mill-pond as we made sail for our 
headland, looming up cool and shady to the 
eastward. The water was so clear beneath us 
that each patch of oysters could be distinguished 
on the bottom. Our friend M., whom we had 
along with us, and to whom I sang the praises 



i6o "Dead Trees Love the Fire" 

of a pine-knot fire, suggested that if every one 
took to wood fires and burned up a dozen 
cords of wood in the winter, as we did, wood 
would become exorbitantly dear, and none but 
millionaires would be able to afford it. It is 
said that it takes the wood of five square miles 
every year to furnish matches for the world, 
the daily consumption in this country reaching 
ten matches per head for every man, woman, 
and child. And about once a year the papers 
contain articles warning the people that our 
forests are disappearing, never to grow again. 
This sort of talk is rather lost upon any one 
who lives down on Long Island anywhere be- 
yond Babylon, for here there are tracts of 
country where one can walk for miles and miles 
without meeting a soul or seeing a house, and 
yet covered with a growth of excellent fire- 
wood, untouched almost from generation to 
generation. Yet we are within seventy-five 
miles of the greatest city on the continent. 
If New York City should ever take to wood 
fires. Long Island can grow wood just as well 
as cabbages. Even now, when our Long 
Island woods have been shamefully neglected 



''Dead Trees Love the Fire" i6i 

for generations, no one ever thinking of re- 
planting a forest that has been cut down or 
burned up, good firewood, of pine or oak, can 
be bought for three dollars a cord, cut and de- 
livered. A cord of wood will give a roaring 
blaze every night for a month. If you cut the 
wood yourself, as I do, you can have it almost 
for nothing. There may come a time when 
wood will become scarce in this neighborhood, 
but it will not be in my day or in the day of 
the children whom I am teaching to look upon 
a blazing hearth as an essential feature of home. 
By that time, man will probably get his heat 
from stored-up sunlight, or from electricity 
furnished by the rush of the tides or the sweep 
of the winds. 

As we have a good hour's sail before us. one 
of the party reads out Thoreau's chapter on 
firewood, a wonderful study which rather 
dwarfs all attempts to say much upon the same 
subject. This is what I call a happiness be- 
yond the making of any number of dollars. 
Here we are in our staunch, safe boat, gliding 
along with just enough sea breeze to take us 
to that haven where we would be, my wife and 



i62 "Dead Trees Love the Fire" 

children finding health and spirits in it, a few 
books and magazines, and the prospect of 
several hours of hard, healthy work in the 
woods before we make sail for home as the 
sun goes down. The boom of the surf is 
the only sound that comes to us as we reach 
the middle of the bay and head straight for the 
little half-rotten dock which is all that is left 
of some improvements made years ago by a 
company of speculators who expected to estab- 
lish a summer resort at the point we are steer- 
ing for. Away to the north of us a puff of 
steam or smoke shows where the locomotive is 
dragging those poor wretches off to their daily 
treadmill. How very far away all such life 
seems ! If it were not for the daily newspapers, 
I should almost forget that there were so many 
miserable beings grinding out their few years 
of existence with so utter a disregard of the 
essential facts in the case. That puff of smoke 
is the last reminder of civilization that we shall 
have during the day before we sight our village 
again. As the last line of Thoreau's chapter 
is read, the boat swings round into the breeze 
and Arthur jumps ashore and makes us fast. 



''Dead Trees Love the Fire" 163 

while we gather up our implements of work. 
The shore here presents a picture not unusual 
at this part of the bay. For three or four 
hundred feet from the water there is a meadow 
filled with low bushes and blackberry vines of 
the creeping type. Then comes a rise in the 
ground, and a plateau stetches away to the 
north, covered with a heavy growth of trees. 
The spot is a superb one for a big hotel or a col- 
ony of cottages, and undoubtedly it would long 
ago have been used for this purpose but for the 
distance from the railroad; it is a five-mile 
drive to the nearest railway station, and that 
would be a fatal waste of time to any business 
man. One of the reasons given for the success 
of the big hotel at Babylon is that it stands so 
near the railroad that the New Yorker can step 
from his train to the piazza of the hotel. 

The shore presents this morning a beautiful 
picture of absolute calm. At nine o'clock no- 
thing is heard, as we stand on the little wharf 
and survey the scene, but the distant boom of 
the surf to the south of us on the other side 
of the sand-bar, and the singing of the birds in 
the woods around us. The bay sleeps quietly 



1 64 ''Dead Trees Love the Fire" 

in the sunlight, and the whole Long Island 
coast is in brilliant relief, with its hills in the 
background, just beginning to show the first 
tints of autumn. Our miniature forest is but 
a five minutes' stroll up to the headland, and 
the children begin an attack on the last of the 
blackberries as we go along. Upon reaching 
our grove I spy my old friend the Cap'n 
coming along the shore in his cat-boat from a 
visit to some distant eel-pots, and with the 
conviction that he may have something worth 
buying besides eels, I go down to the shore 
and hail him. I stand high in the Cap'n's 
consideration just now, — that is, as high as any 
landlubber can ever expect to stand, — for I have 
placed at the side of my writing-desk one of 
his eel-pots, which I use as a scrap-basket. I 
got the Cap'n to make it for half-a-dollar, and 
as I could n't quite make him understand for 
exactly what purpose I wanted it, as a waste- 
basket is something he had never heard of, he 
made me a perfect eel-pot, and having put it 
in place I called him in and showed him how 
admirably it served its purpose. It was nauti- 
cal, ichthyological, and harmonizes with the 



"Dead Trees Love the Fire" 165 

room full of nets, poles, and guns. The Cap'n 
was so much pleased with the sight of his eel- 
pot half full of the waste from my desk that I 
can scarcely get him to accept pay for bait, and 
some day I think that he will show me a few of 
the places in the bay where weak-fish are really 
caught, instead of many places where they are 
not, as is the custom with professional fisher- 
men. Sure enough, the Cap'n has a bushel of 
clams in his boat which he is taking over to the 
beach for a friend, and it is not hard to divert 
the store to our own purposes. The children 
come down to the shore and I pull the basket 
up the bank under the shade of some pines, 
while they begin to collect firewood enough for 
a clam-bake at dinner-time. If we cannot get 
clams at our end of the bay, the water being 
too fresh so far from an ocean inlet, we can at 
least have them brought from fifteen to twenty 
miles farther down, and then they can be 
thrown into the water, where they will live for 
months, to be taken up whenever wanted. 

The real work of the day then began. While 
the ladies sewed and read in the shade, and the 
children picked late blackberries, w^e sturdy 



1 66 "Dead Trees Love the Fire" 

laborers undertook to cut down half-a-dozen 
small pines and saw their gnarled limbs into 
suitable pieces for the fire. It was hot work, 
and it made it hotter to think of the blaze that 
we were preparing for. To quote Thoreau 
again, he used to say that he got more warmth 
out of cutting his firewood than out of its blaze, 
and his conscience was never quite easy as to 
the return he made for the blessings of a log 
fire. He used to say that though he had paid 
money to the owner of that wood, he was never 
quite sure that the debt had been wholly dis- 
charged. In two hours we had done enough 
of our work to see that with a little sawing 
after dinner there would be sufficient to load 
up the boat, and then after a short rest we be- 
gan to prepare for dinner. Whoever wants to 
know what clams are worth must cook them 
on the shore, and with driftwood picked up 
for the purpose. I have tried a clam-bake in 
our garden, I have tried it on the kitchen stove, 
but whether the difference is in the clams or in 
our appetites, the result is never the same. It 
is the easiest thing in the world to bake clams 
to perfection, if a few simple rules are observed. 



*'Dead Trees Love the Fire" 167 

Sweep a flat space upon the sand, and lay upon 
it the sort of griddle made for the purpose, 
which can be found all over Long Island. The 
clams are held upright in this griddle, which 
holds at least one hundred, and sometimes 
more. Right on top of the clams build a loose 
fire of the driftwood, and after it has blazed 
well for five minutes, and the clams begin to 
hiss violently, half smother it with wet sea- 
weed ; a moment after, one or two clams may 
be tested. Pick one out with a pair of tongs 
and throw it up in the air, letting it come down 
upon any hard surface, a board or a stone. If 
it flies open, all is well, and the feast may be- 
gin ; if not, the clams are not quite done. 
When all is ready, shovel them into a large tin 
pan. We always keep the implements for a 
clam-bake in one of the lockers of the boat, for 
scores of times every summer we find that we 
can have a clam-bake when we least expected 
it, just as it happened this morning. Two 
hundred clams disappeared among seven of us, 
almost sooner than it takes to tell the tale, and 
back we went to our work. 

As I shouldered my axe again I could not 



1 68 ''Dead Trees Love the Fire" 

help one more thought of the miserable toilers 
in town. Was I stealing a living? If so, the 
old adage regarding stolen sweets once more 
proved true. The children are set at work 
carrying the wood down to the shore ready to 
be put on board, and even the youngest, a 
sturdy damsel of not quite four, shouts with 
indignation if any one proposes to help her 
along with her load. It is not four o'clock 
when we have enough wood to fill up the sail- 
boat, and we have to put some of it on deck. 
It has turned out to be a pretty hot day, and 
as there is enough breeze to take us home in 
less than an hour, we decide for a surf-bath, 
and the Nelly s prow is turned over to the 
beach a mile off. I suppose that with some 
people the daily surf-bath from June till Octo- 
ber might become so much a matter of course 
as to lose half its delights. As with country 
life, so it is with the surf, so far as I am con- 
cerned. It is always the keenest of pleasures 
and never more so than after a good day's hard 
physical work. By five o'clock we make sail 
for home, and for an hour we have before us a 
more splendid painting than was ever made by 



"Dead Trees Love the Fire" 169 

man. Here, on the Great South Bay, we seem 
to be particularly favored in the matter of sun- 
sets, for certainly more than half our days end 
with one of these color displays as changing as 
it is indescribable. We have grown so used to 
these wonderful pictures that adjectives and 
superlatives have long ago been used up ; some 
one points now and then to a particularly ex- 
quisite blending of gold and silver, and the rest 
of the party nod in silence. By the time we 
reach our harbor, the sun has gone down with 
the breeze, and we drift slowly into the little 
slip. The village is at supper, and my friend 
the Cap'n, who stands on the dock, is the only 
one to greet us. He peers curiously at the 
wood, and seems doubtful when I tell him that 
it is to burn. For the Cap'n also has his ideas 
about queer people who waste a whole day and 
sail ten miles to get a lot of pine knots that 
any "nigger " would have delivered for a two- 
dollar bill. The Cap'n's notion of otiuvi cuvi 
dignitate is probably an unfailing supply of 
tobacco, and an endless conference around the 
village store stove upon the affairs of the neigh- 
borhood and the nation. I told him once that 



I70 "Dead Trees Love the Fire" 

I should think he would enjoy making eel-pots, 
for the work has a certain fascination about it 
— this weaving together of strong, supple twigs 
of oak, the converting of an old log into hun- 
dreds of pots that will do duty for years. 
Every day the Cap'n can feel that he has pro- 
duced something of value, which is more than 
a great many more pretentious people I know 
of can say. Down comes the sail, and while 
the boys tie it up and make the ropes ship- 
shape for the night, we gather up our traps and 
start for the house, leaving the Cap'n deep in 
thought, as he squints first at the horizon and 
then at our little pile of logs. Even twelve 
hours of open air have not quite satisfied me, 
and were it not for several letters to write and 
a good many proof-sheets to read, I should 
like to join the Cap'n in a tour of his eel-pots. 
There is no wind, so that the bay reflects every 
star as it peeps out, and away down in the 
southwest we catch a gleam from the Fire 
Island Light. 



THE LIFE WORTH LIVING— HENRY 
DAVID THOREAU 

IT has often been urged that such a scheme as 
mine would be all very well for a man with 
even a small income, say sufficient to insure 
him and his family against starvation at any 
time, and to give him the few luxuries which 
with most people of refinement have become 
almost necessary. For instance, even an in- 
come of five hundred dollars a year might war- 
rant a person of very simple tastes in making 
such an experiment as I have outlined ; such a 
sum would, at least, provide oatmeal and milk, 
bread and coffee. It would be largely a return 
to first principles in household economy, but 
there are people who would not grumble could 
they exchange a life of intellectual plenty even 
at this cost of superfluities. So modest a sum 
as five hundred dollars a year, if used with skill, 
might provide a glimpse of such dissipation 
171 



172 The Life Worth Living 

as an occasional theatre, or a strain of music 
in the depth of winter, the only time when 
the real countryman would have the time to 
leave his home, or the inclination to do so. 
The rest of the year would be pretty fully 
taken up. In my own case, it happens that, 
unlike most men who have to look to the earn- 
ings of the year for bread and butter, I can 
throw all city work overboard when the spring 
opens, and not set foot in town before the 
snow flies. To most men, and to all busi- 
ness men, such an arrangement is impossi- 
ble ; the merchant cannot interrupt his work 
for so long a time with any certainty that he 
will be able to pick it up again ; the clerk in a 
shop or a factory must be at his post all the 
year around, or not at all; the lawyer has to 
"keep track " of his clients' affairs, or he would 
soon find himself without clients. The world's 
machinery cannot stop, and the engineers must 
be at their posts. There are very few occupa- 
tions outside of certain departments of journal- 
ism which can be taken up and thrown down 
at will. The merchant, the clerk, the lawyer, 
the doctor, must remain at their posts pretty 



Henry David Thoreau 173 

much the year around, and this rule obtains all 
the more strictly with subordinates. 

Therefore the problem becomes in the case 
of ninety-nine men out of a hundred : Either 
to give up one or the other. I have listened 
to scores of persons to whom I have submitted 
this problem, who are very certain that no 
man, especially if bred in a large city, would 
consent to forsake the pleasures of the town 
for the quiet of the country. I took the trouble 
once to find out, as nearly as possible, exactly 
what the average business man means by the 
word "pleasure." It seems that in the opinion 
of the typical young man of business, pleasure 
means going to the theatre once or twice a 
week, meeting large numbers of other young 
men and young women in the shops, or 
in the streets, or in their homes, or at church. 
The essence of this pleasure is the crowd, — 
largely of inane people characterized by unrest, 
hurry, or idle curiosity. This same love of 
the crowd characterizes many strata of society 
in cities, and the disease seems to thrive by 
what it feeds upon. As an illustration, take 
the history of the efforts made by one of our 



174 The Life Worth Living 

charitable societies to induce some of the very 
poorest inhabitants of our most squalid neigh- 
borhoods to get into the country. For nearly 
twenty years the district lying between the 
Bowery and the East River in New York City 
has been crowded with very poor people, who 
make a business of sewing upon ready-made 
clothing. They are largely Polish Jews of 
small intelligence, and apparently no instinct 
beyond self-preservation. They live, or rather 
herd, together in vile holes, for which they pay 
exorbitant rents, and their life is one long 
struggle and incessant work. According to 
credible reports, work begins soon after day- 
break and lasts far into night, when the poor 
wretches sink down exhausted upon the piles 
of clothing which they are making for the cheap 
shops of the country. Whole families live and 
die in this wretchedness, the children knowing 
no childhood, as we understand it, and old age 
being out of the question in this atmosphere of 
foul air and incessant toil. It is not the work 
of healthy people, but a nervous strain to 
accomplish two days' work in one. In many 
visits which I have made to such homes, I have 



Henry David Thoreau 175 

invariably noticed that the workers seldom look 
up, and then only for a hurried glance — time 
is too precious. Well, the society in question 
attempted to solve the problem before them. 
Here were thousands and thousands of people 
who never knew what rest or recreation really 
meant, whose children had never seen a green 
field, or had had a real play in good air, whose 
lives were apparently hopeless. Ask some of 
the most intelligent of these slaves of the needle 
why they cannot move out into the suburbs 
where they could get nice little cottages for less 
money than they pay in their horrible quarters 
in the tenement districts, and the answer is al- 
ways that they cannot spare the time needed 
to go back and forth with the bundles of cloth- 
ing upon which the family labors. In New 
York such errands require but a few moments; 
in the country they would take up time and 
money for car-fares. 

The society resolved to do away with that 
trouble, by paying for the expressage of cloth- 
ing to and from the city for people who might 
like to move away, and a quiet spot was found 
out on Long Island where a dozen little houses 



176 The Life Worth Living 

were made ready for the first colony of these 
people. When it came to actually leaving 
New York there was some trouble in inducing 
a dozen families to go, but by collecting people 
with many children and making the rents of 
the cottages almost nominal, a dozen families 
were found to make the experiment. In less 
than a year and a half the scheme was aban- 
doned. At no time were the cottages all occu- 
pied after the first month, and it required great 
inducements to prevail upon the tenants to re- 
main more than a quarter. The reasons given 
by them for returning to New York were, in 
all cases, the same: the women of the family 
were lonely — they missed the society of the 
tenements. They missed the life of the streets, 
the drunken brawls, the yells and screams, the 
dirt, the noise, the heat, the foul air and lan- 
guage of the slums. The children may have 
enjoyed the country, but their elders wanted 
society. Going higher in the social scale, it 
seems to be very much the same story. People 
with not much to think about cannot get on 
without the crowd, no matter what kind of a 
crowd. I am convinced that this is a far more 



Henry David Thoreau 177 

potent factor in keeping people in great cities 
and attracting them than the prospect of better 
clothes and whiter hands which the shop offers 
to the young man from the farm. Therefore 
in order to wean city people, who ought not to 
live in the city, away from improper environ- 
ment it is necessary to influence them in some 
other way than by the offer of purely physical 
or economical advantages. Probably but very 
little can be done in this field except through 
the children, and the value of the work accom- 
plished by the Children's Aid Society in send- 
ing out waifs picked out from the streets to 
green fields and pastures new in the Far West 
cannot be overestimated. With the average 
young man or young woman, who finds ample 
enjoyment in the gossip of the shops and is in- 
clined to pity any one condemned to country 
life, I am inclined to think that the case is 
almost equally hopeless. The man who takes 
nothing into the country with him, intellec- 
tually speaking, ought not to go there; he will 
be lonely. I was strongly impressed with this 
phase of the matter when I made some visits 
among the cheap shops which line Grand 



178 The Life Worth Living 

Street, east of the Bowery. There are large 
shops here, employing hundreds of clerks of 
both sexes. Work begins early and lasts until 
seven or eight o'clock in the evening. In 
many of the shops it is so dark that gas or 
electric lights have to be used at mid-day. 
The neighborhood is alive with people of the 
lower and middling classes, and the life of a 
clerk in one of these shops is perpetual motion. 
I questioned young men and young women in 
these shops as to how they liked their work, 
and as to why they did not try to get into 
something that offered them more time and 
better air. In no case out of twenty or thirty 
persons whom I addressed as particularly likely 
to sympathize with the suggestion that such a 
life in such a place was the life of a dog, did I 
meet with a responsive note. It seemed to 
these people that all was right ; it was a case of 
"Where ignorance is bliss." 

I remember again passing through Grand 
Street early one morning last summer, on my 
way to take the train for a far-off country 
village. The morning was intensely uncom- 
fortable, the forerunner of a terrible day, sure 



Henry David Thoreau 179 

to count its victims by the score. In front of 
every shop along this thoroughfare were groups 
of clerks busy piling up dry goods in more or 
less artistic shape, intended to impress the 
passers. I saw hundreds of men, many of 
them gray-headed and able-bodied, who seemed 
to find nothing unpleasant about their work. 
To one or two I ventured the remark as I went 
along that it was going to be a very hot day, 
and that the country boys had the advantage 
of their city brothers. Even that, the few 
clerks to whom I spoke were inclined to dis- 
pute. The country lad, they argued, had his 
troubles. It was hot in the cornfield as well as 
on Grand Street, and while the dry-goods clerk 
could retire into the depths of the shop, the 
farm lad had to work away. I found no one 
inclined to prefer the life of field work to which 
I looked forward to that of the Grand Street 
dry-goods shops. These young gentlemen 
would carry nothing with them should they 
abandon the shop and their equally empty- 
headed associates. Why should they give up 
the society they knew for the utter solitude of 
a life on the farm, or the bay? 



i8o The Life Worth Living 

I have put some words of Thoreau's upon 
the title-page of this book, and no one who 
has taken the pains to dip into its pages can 
have failed to see that I have read the famous 
hermit of Walden Pond with persisteno.* and 
admiration. There has always been to me 
something fascinating about this out-door 
idealist. I never have been, and probably 
never shall be, a sympathizer with the view 
which makes Thoreau a skulker, as Carlyle 
calls him, or a loafer, as most of our typical 
American business men, if they know anj-thing 
about him at all, would probably dub him. 
At the same time, I will confess that the man's 
asceticism has less fascination for me than the 
persistena,- with which he harps upon the idea 
that nine tenths or ninety-nine one-hundredths 
of our people waste their time in making 
money ; touch Thoreau at any point with re- 
gard to business polic}'^ or business life, and he 
fairly bristles with sarcasm and jibes. It has 
been a life-long wonder to me that the man 
has not been valued more highly even in this 
community devoted to matters of fact, and that 
so few outside of a narrow circle of writers and 



Henry David Thoreau i8i 

thinkers know anything about him. I am con- 
vinced that the time will come when the name 
of Henry David Thoreau will stand high in 
American annals. He was our first noted 
protestant — passionate, earnest, persistent, 
honest — against the sordid materialism of this 
country. Our earlier years as a nation were 
naturally taken up with hard material work, 
and if to-day we place work, as work, upon a 
pedestal which it does not deserve, it is due to 
the hereditary warp of the last one hundred 
years, when the drawing of water and the hew- 
ing of wood were essential to life, to say no- 
thing of comfort. There was certain to be 
some energetic protest against the narrow view 
of life which all work and no play was sure to 
produce in us as a people, and the wonder is 
that Thoreau stands alone as a protestant. 

The personality of the man is so interesting 
that I will take the liberty of devoting a few 
pages to saying something of him, using many 
words and expressions which I find in an ad- 
mirable little article contributed some years 
ago to the CornJiill Magazine, by Stevenson. 
" Thoreau 's thin, penetrating, big-nosed face. 



1 82 The Life Worth Living 

even in a bad wood-cut," says this writer, 
"conveys some hint of the limitations of his 
mind and character. With his almost acid 
sharpness of insight, with his almost animal 
dexterity in action, there went none of that 
large, unconscious geniality of the world's 
hero. He was not easy, or ample, or urbane, 
not even kind," "He was bred to no pro- 
fession," says Emerson; "he never married; 
he lived alone, he went to no church ; he never 
voted, he refused to pay a tax to the State ; he 
ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never knew 
the use of tobacco ; and though a naturalist, 
he used neither trap nor gun. When asked at 
dinner what dish he preferred, he answered, 
'the nearest.* " He was no ascetic, rather an 
epicurean of the noblest sort. And he had this 
one great merit, that he succeeded so far as to 
be happy. He was content in living like the 
plant he had planted and watered with solici- 
tude. For instance, he explains his abstinence 
from tea and coffee by saying that it was bad 
economy and worthy of no true virtuoso to 
spoil the natural rapture of the morning with 
stimulants; let him see the sunshine and he 



Henry David Thoreau 183 

was ready for the labors of the day. These 
labors were partly to keep out of the way of 
the world. His faculties were of a piece with 
his moral shyness. He could guide himself 
about the woods on the darkest night by the 
touch of his feet. He could pick up an exact 
dozen of pencils by feeling; pace distances 
with accuracy. His smell was so dainty that 
he could perceive \.\\.(i fcetor of dwelling-houses 
as he passed them at night ; his palate so un- 
sophisticated that like a child he disliked the 
taste of wine ; and his knowledge of nature was 
so complete and curious that he could have 
told the time of year within a day or so by the 
aspect of the plants. There were few things 
that he could not do. He could make a house, 
a boat, a pencil, or a book. He was a sur- 
veyor, a scholar, a natural historian. He could 
run, walk, climb, skate, and swim, and manage 
a boat. The smallest occasion served to dis- 
play his physical accomplishments ; and a 
manufacturer, upon observing his dexterity 
with the window of a railway car, offered him 
a situation on the spot. 

Thoreau decided from the first to live a life 



184 The Life Worth Living 

of self-improvement ; he saw duty and inclina- 
tion in that direction. He had no money, and 
it was a sore necessity which compelled him to 
make money — even the little he needed. There 
was a love of freedom, a strain of the wild man, 
in his nature that rebelled with violence against 
the yoke of custom ; he was so eager to culti- 
vate himself and to be happy in his own society, 
that he could consent with difficulty even to 
interruptions of friendship. "Stick are my 
engagements to jujse// that I dare not promise," 
he once wrote in answer to an invitation ; and 
the italics are his own. Thoreau is always 
careful of himself, and he must think twice 
about a morning call. Imagine him condemned 
for eight hours a day to some uncongenial and 
unmeaning business. He shrank from the very 
look of the mechanical in life; all should, if 
possible, be sweetly spontaneous. Thus he 
learned to make lead-pencils, and when he had 
gained the highest certificate and his friends 
began to congratulate him on his establishment 
in life, he calmly announced that he should 
never make another. "Why should I?" said 
he; "I would not do again what I have done 



Henry David Thoreau 185 

once." Yet in after years, when it became 
needful to support his family, he turned pa- 
tiently to this mechanical art. He tried school- 
teaching. "As I did not teach for the benefit 
of my fellow-men," he says, "but simply for a 
livelihood, this was a failure." He tried trade 
with the same results. As I have already said, 
his contempt for business and business men 
was utter. He says: "If our merchants did 
not most of them fail and the banks too, my 
faith in the old rules of this world would be 
staggered. The statement that ninety-nine in 
a hundred doing such business surely break 
down is perhaps the sweetest fact that statistics 
have revealed. ' ' The wish was probably father 
to the figures. 

"The cost of a thing," says Thoreau, "is 
the amount of what I will call life which is re- 
quired to be exchanged for it, immediately or 
in the long run." The idea may be common- 
place, and yet most of us will admit a leavening 
of truth in it while declining to make an ex- 
periment. Do you want one thousand a year, 
or two thousand a year? Do you want ten 
thousand a year? And can you afford what 



1 86 The Life Worth Living 

you want? It is a matter of taste, and within 
certain lines not in the least a question of duty, 
although commonly supposed to be so. There 
is no authority for that view anywhere. Tho- 
reau's tastes are well defined. He loved to be 
free, to be master of his times and seasons ; he 
preferred long rambles to rich dinners, his own 
reflections to the consideration of society, and 
an easy, calm, unfettered life among green 
trees to dull toiling at the counter of a bank. 
And such being his inclination, he determined 
that he would gratify it. 

In 1845, when twenty-eight years old, an age 
by which the liveliest of us have usually de- 
clined into some conformity with the world, 
Thoreau, with a capital of less than twenty-five 
dollars, and a borrowed axe, walked into the 
woods by Walden Pond, and began his experi- 
ment. He built himself a dwelling, and re- 
turned the axe, he says, sharper than when he 
borrowed it ; he reclaimed a patch of ground 
where he cultivated beans, peas, potatoes, and 
sweet-corn ; he had his bread to bake, his farm 
to dig, and for six weeks in the summer he 
worked as surveyor or carpenter. For more 



Henry David Thoreau 187 

than five years this was all that he required to 
do for his support. For six weeks of occupa- 
tion, a little cooking and a little gentle hygienic 
gardening, the man had as good as stolen his 
living. Or it must rather be allowed that he 
had done far better; for the thief himself was 
continually and busily occupied. He says: 
"What old people tell you you cannot do, you 
try and find you can." And his conclusion is: 
"I am convinced that to maintain one's self on 
this earth is not a hardship but a pastime if we 
will live simply and wisely; the pursuits of 
simpler nations are still the sports of the more 
artificial." When Thoreau had had enough of 
Walden Pond, he showed the same simplicity 
in giving it up as in beginning. He made no 
fetish of his scheme, and did what he wanted 
squarely. The frugality he exercised and his 
asceticism are not the notable points of this 
notable experiment. The remarkable part of 
it is his recognition of the position of money ; 
he had perceived and was acting on a truth 
of universal application. A certain amount of 
money, varying with the number and extent of 
our desires, is a necessity to each one of us in 



1 88 The Life Worth Living 

the present order of society ; but beyond that 
amount, money is a commodity to be bought 
or not to be bought, a luxury in which we may 
indulge or stint ourselves like any other. And 
there are many luxuries that we may legiti- 
mately prefer to money, such as a grateful con- 
science, a country life, or the woman of our 
inclination. Trite, flat, and obvious as this 
conclusion may appear, we have only to look 
around us to see how scantily it has been 
recognized ; and after a little reflection perhaps 
we may decide to spend a trifle less for money 
and indulge ourselves a trifle more in freedom. 
Says Thoreau : "To have done anything by 
which you earned money merely, is to be idle 
and worse." There are in his letters two pas- 
sages relating to firewood which illustrate 
curiously the man's habits and instinct of 
studying causes and reasons rather than effects. 
He says: "I suppose I have burned up a 
good-sized tree to-night — and for what? I 
settled with Mr. Tarbell for it the other day ; 
but that was n't a final settlement. I got off 
cheaply from him. At last one will say: 'Let 
us see, how much wood did you burn, sir? ' 



Henry David Thoreau 189 

and I shall shudder to think that the next 
question will be : ' What did you do while you 
were warm?' " It is not enough to have 
earned our livelihood. Either the earning 
should have been serviceable to mankind or 
something else must follow. To live is some- 
times difficult, but it is never meritorious in 
itself, and we must have a reason to give our 
own conscience why we should continue to 
exist upon this earth. Again he says, speaking 
of his wood: "There is a far more important 
and warming heat, commonly lost, which pre- 
cedes the burning of the wood. It is the 
smoke of industry, which is incense. I had 
been so thoroughly warmed in body and spirit 
that when at length my fuel was housed I came 
near selling it to the ashman as if I had ex- 
tracted all its heat." Thus Thoreau was not 
an idler by any means. Industry was a passion 
with him, but it must be productive industry. 
There is not a day when Thoreau does not 
record some useful work in his diary. He 
writes, he works his garden, he chops down 
trees, he helps others. The art he loved was 
literature. He believed in good books; his 



190 The Life Worth Living 

reading was not particularly wide, for he hated 
libraries and had not money wherewith to buy 
books. In one of his diaries he recalls his in- 
disposition to go to Cambridge or Boston in 
order to look at books in the library, and he 
suggests that libraries should be built in the 
woods where sensitive men might enjoy their 
contents without being compelled to face the 
noise and dust of the towns. He wrote at all 
times ; in the evening at his desk, or during a 
moment's rest upon a fallen log or stone. He 
composed as he walked, the length of his walk 
making the length of his writing. When he 
could not get out-of-doors during the day, for 
one reason or another, he wrote nothing; he 
said that houses were like hospitals, and the 
atmosphere of them enervated the mind as well 
as the body. His great subject, the text 
which he viewed on all sides and was always 
preaching from, was the pursuit of self-im- 
provement even in the face of unfriendly 
criticism as it goes on in our society. He was 
a critic before a naturalist. His books, such 
as Waldejt, and A Week on the Concord, would 
be delightful studies of nature even without the 



Henry David Thoreau 191 

touch of interest they acquire at the thought 
that the man himself is preaching to an audi- 
ence of people who consider him little better 
than a madman. Unquestionably he was a 
true lover of nature. 

The quality which we should call mystery in 
a painting, and which belongs so particularly 
to the aspect of the external world and to its 
influence upon our feelings, was one which he 
was never weary of attempting to reproduce in 
his books. The significance of nature's ap- 
pearances, their unchanging strangeness to the 
senses and the thrilling response they awaken 
in the mind of man, continued to surprise and 
stimulate his spirits. He writes to a friend : 
"Let me suggest a theme for you — to state to 
yourself precisely and completely what that 
walk over the mountains amounted to for you, 
returning to this essay again and again until 
you are satisfied that all that was important in 
your experience is in it. Don't suppose that 
you record it precisely the first dozen times you 
try, but at 'em again ; especially when, after 
a sufficient pause, you suspect that you are 
touching; the heart or stomach of the matter. 



192 The Life Worth Living 

Reiterate your blows there and account foi 
the mountain to yourself. Not that the story 
need be long, but it will take a long while to 
make it short." Perhaps the most success- 
ful work that Thoreau accomplished in this 
direction is to be found in the passages relating 
to fish in the Week. These are remarkable 
for a vivid truth of impression and a happy use 
of language not frequently surpassed. 

Perhaps the very coldness and egoism of his 
own nature gave Thoreau a clearer insight into 
the intellectual basis of our warm mutual tolera- 
tions grouped under the head of friendship; 
testimony to the value of friendship comes 
with added force from one who was solitary 
and disobliging, and of whom a friend re- 
marked: "I love Henry, but I cannot like 
him." He made scarcely any distinction be- 
tween love and friendship. He was, indeed, 
too accurate an observer not to remark that 
there exists already a natural disinterestedness 
and liberality between men and women; yet 
he thought friendship no respecter of sex. 
"We are not what we are," says he, "nor do 
we treat or esteem each other for such but for 



Henry David Thoreau 193 

what we are capable of being." Again: "It 
is the merit and preservation of friendship that 
it takes place on a higher level than the actual 
characters of the parties would seem to war- 
rant. Is this not light in a dark place? We 
are different with different friends ; yet if we 
look closer, we shall find that every such re- 
lation reposes on some particular hypothesis of 
one's self." Yet this analyst of friendship 
was not friendly with many persons and was 
intimate with none. Thoreau had no illusions; 
he does not give way to love any more than to 
hatred, but preserves them both with care, like 
valuable curiosities. He is an egoist; he does 
not remember that in these near intimacies we 
are ninety-nine times disappointed in our beg- 
garly selves for once that we are disappointed 
in our friends; that it is we who seem most 
frequently undeserving of the love that unites 
us. Thoreau is after profit in these intimacies; 
moral profit to be sure, but still profit to him- 
self. "If you will be the sort of friend I 
want," he remarks, "my education cannot 
dispense with your society." As though his 

friend were a dictionary. And with all this, 
13 



194 The Life Worth Living 

not one word about pleasure, or laughter, or 
kisses, or any quality of flesh and blood. It 
was not inappropriate, surely, that he had such 
close relations with the fishes. We can under- 
stand the friend already quoted when he cried : 
"As for taking his arm, I would as soon think 
of taking the arm of an elm-tree." It is not 
surprising that he experienced but a broken 
enjoyment in his intimacies; he went to see his 
friends as one might stroll in to see a cricket- 
match — not simply for the pleasure of the 
thing, but with some afterthought of self-im- 
provement. It was his theory that people saw 
each other too frequently; they had nothing 
fresh to communicate; friendship with him 
meant a society for mutual improvement. 

"The only obligation," says he, "which I 
have a right to assume is to do at any time 
what I think right." "Why should we ever 
go abroad, even across the way to ask a neigh- 
bor's advice?" "There is a nearer neighbor 
within who is incessantly telling us how we 
should behave. But we wait for the neighbor 
without to tell us of some faults." " The greater 
part of what my neighbors call good I believe 



Henry David Thoreau 195 

in my soul to be bad." To be what we are 
and to become what we are capable of becom- 
ing is the end of life. It is "when we fall be- 
hind ourselves," that "we are cursed with 
duties and the neglect of duties." "I love 
the wild," he says, "not less than the good. 
The life of a good man will hardly improve us 
more than the life of a freebooter, for the in- 
evitable laws appear as plainly in the infringe- 
ment as in the observance, and our lives are 
sustained by a nearly equal expense of virtue 
of some kind." "As for doing good," he 
writes elsewhere, "that is one of the profes- 
sions that are full. Moreover, I have tried it 
fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied 
that it does not agree with my constitution. 
Probably I should not conscientiously and de- 
liberately forsake my particular calling to do the 
good which society demands of me to save the 
universe from annihilation ; and I believe that 
a like but infinitely greater steadfastness else- 
where is all that preserves it now. If you should 
ever be betrayed into any of these philanthro- 
pies, do not let your left hand know what your 
right hand does, for it is not worth knowing." 



196 The Life Worth Living 

In the case of Thoreau so great a show of 
doctrine contrary to what the world believed, 
demanded some practical outcome. If nothing 
were to be done but build a shanty at Wald(3n 
Pond, we have heard too much of these decla- 
rations of independence. That the man wrote 
some books is nothing to the purpose, for the 
same has been done in a suburban villa. That 
he kept himself happy is perhaps a sufficient 
excuse, but it is disappointing to the reader. 
We may be unjust, but when a man despises 
commerce and philanthropy and has views of 
good so soaring that he must take himself 
apart from mankind for their cultivation, we 
will not rest content without some striking act. 
And it was not Thoreau 's fault if he were not 
martyred ; had the occasion come, he would 
have made a noble ending. He made one 
practical appearance on the stage of affairs, and 
strangely characteristic of the man. It was 
forced on him by his calm but radical opposi- 
tion to negro slavery. "Voting for the right 
is doing nothing for it," he says; "it is only 
expressing to men feebly your desire that it 
should prevail." "I do not hesitate to say," 



Henry David Thoreau 197 

he adds, "that those who call themselves abo- 
litionists should at once effectually withdraw 
their support both in person and property from 
the government of Massachusetts." This is 
what he did. In 1843 he ceased to pay the 
poll-tax. He had seceded. He says: "In 
fact I declare war with the State after my own 
fashion." He was put in prison, but that was 
a part of his design. "Under a government 
which imprisons any unjustly, the true place 
for a just man is also in prison. I know this 
well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if 
ten men whom I could name — ay, if one 
honest man in this State of Massachusetts, 
ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to with- 
draw from this copartnership and be locked up 
in the county jail therefor it would be the abo- 
lition of slavery in America." A friend paid 
the tax for him and continued year by year to 
pay it, so that Thoreau was free to walk the 
woods. 

This curious personality of Henry David 
Thoreau stands alone, apparently, as a practical 
attempt to grasp the good things of this world, 
in a higher sense, without paying the penalty 



198 The Life Worth Living 

which tradition and custom exact. In more 
ways than in money we constantly pay for the 
privilege of living in crowds. To say nothing 
of the nervous wear and tear, the whole drift 
is by association tending towards deterioration. 
So long as we continue to live in crowds there 
must be an infinite amount of contact with 
human nature which is petty, mean, despicable. 
We cannot escape from it. While in Rome we 
must do as the Romans. I confess that if my 
fellow-man is typified in the crowd I see around 
me, especially in large cities, I detest my fellow- 
man. It may be the height of selfishness for 
the egoist to say: "These people have nothing 
good to teach me; I can gain nothing from 
them ; let them keep to themselves and allow 
me to strive for something higher, untram- 
melled by their association or their advice." 
But such a course may be wise in order to 
make the most of what little capital we have 
fallen heir to in the shape of health, intelli- 
gence, and appreciation of things which are 
priceless in every sense, such as the sunlight 
and the color of the clouds. To get rid of 
unpleasant and seemingly unprofitable associa- 



Henry David Thoreau 199 

tions,Thoreau cut loose from society and buried 
himself at Walden. You may call it selfish- 
ness, if you will, but which is more likely to 
occur: that you will sink to the level of the 
crowd which surrounds you, or that, by taking 
up your cross and remaining at your post, the 
crowd will benefit by your self-sacrifices and 
reflect one gleam of what you may consider to 
be your superior light? Is there not egoism in 
either course, perhaps the lesser in fleeing from 
the crowd and trying to work out salvation 
for one's self and one's family? 






WHAT WE LOSE AND WHAT WE 
GAIN 

WHEN the prisoners were released from 
the Bastille by the mob, it is said that 
some of the old men begged to be allowed to 
return to their cells ; they had become so ac- 
customed to darkness and confinement that 
they dreaded the open air. The man who can 
find nothing but ennui in the fields is an illus- 
tration of the same curious phenomenon — the 
loss of appreciation of what is best in life. For 
several years I have been harping upon this 
theme ; I have preached in season and out of 
season, that open-air life is the right one, and 
that any man who ties himself down for eight 
or ten hours a day the year round to a desk is 
paying too much for the money he earns ; and 
I have done this without, so far as I know, 
making a single convert. I have preached 
country life and country work until some of 



What We Lose and Gain 201 

my friends dread the mention of the subject. 
In the beginning they argued the matter; now 
they laugh, as if to say that I have become so 
infatuated with my hobby as to have lost all 
sense of proportion. I never expected to make 
a convert ; in fact, I should feel rather uncom- 
fortable if any friend of mine should desert his 
desk and take to the garden for a living upon 
my advice. So that I have not been disap- 
pointed. At the same time, I have discovered 
nothing to make me doubt the soundness of 
my position. I listen to ridicule and argu- 
ment, endeavoring to give due weight to what 
I hear. The chief reasons why this desertion 
of the town is denounced as folly may be 
summed up as follows: (i) The loneliness of 
the country will become oppressive ; (2) it will 
be impossible to give my family more than the 
comforts of a workman's home — our living will 
be plain, our clothes will be unfashionable, our 
rich neighbors will not call upon us; (3) the 
children will grow up no better than farmers' 
children ; (4) in the end there will be a return 
to town to take up the old life under con- 
ditions of greater hardship than ever, years of 



202 What We Lose 

absence having broken connections that might 
have become profitable with time; (5) to leave 
town for good, or practically for good, is unfair 
to my wife and children, even if I do find 
pleasure and profit myself in such a step. It 
is implied that life without new bonnets is not 
worth living to a woman, and that children 
may grow up to be young savages. In the 
following pages I try to answer these objec- 
tions. Whether or not I succeed in convincing 
any one, I am sure that they rest upon a wholly 
false estimate of the value of city life and upon 
the equally false notion to the effect that intel- 
lectual growth cannot take place far from great 
cities. One of my acquaintances to whom I 
announced one day that I hoped never again 
to spend more than ten weeks of the year in 
the city, said to me: "How do you get on 
without society? In summer you may have 
city friends glad to share your bluefish and 
honey for a few weeks, but the rest of the year 
— before July and after September — it must be 
lonely enough to drive you crazy." 

So I must hear the talk of the town in order 
to be happy? Seriously, I do not believe that 



And What We Gain 203 

from one end of the week to the other passed 
in the very heart of the city's turmoil, working 
for many hours in a busy newspaper ofifice — the 
very place where interesting talk is supposed 
to centre — visiting a club or two, going to the 
theatre and to the opera several times — I do 
not believe that in this busy week I hear 
enough interesting talk to compensate me for 
the loss of one hour in my orchard or on the 
bay. You cannot get out of people what is 
not in them. You cannot expect the success- 
ful dealer in butter, sugar, or candle-grease to 
tell you anything you do not know, unless it is 
about things he buys and sells, and I am not 
interested in these things. Of all the dreary 
stuff with which our dreary newspapers are 
filled, by all odds the most dreary to me con- 
sists of the reproductions of the talk of these 
good people. The personal-gossip column, 
which of late years has grown to great lengths 
— millionaire A's explanation of the recent rise 
in the price of leather. Senator B's reasons for 
believing that Coroner Jones will again be 
elected this year, are matters that do not in- 
terest me in the least. An ocean of gabble 



204 What We Lose 

which to-day appears to hide the paucity of 
ideas among us has broken into the news- 
papers. The exaggeration of trifles is one of 
the diseases of the age. The instructions given 
to our reporters seem to be to question the 
boot-black who blacks their shoes, the washer- 
woman who brings home their shirts, and the 
President of the United States, if they are 
lucky enough to meet him, printing all that 
the washerwoman, the boot-black, and the 
President may have to say about their respec- 
tive businesses. The stuff is ground over and 
over again. Nothing interesting can come 
from people who have no ideas, and ideas do 
not come by dint of gabble. Silence is golden. 
In my orchard there is silence. I have always 
admired Webster's reply to a barber, who asked 
him how he wished to be shaved. "In silence, 
replied the great man. I suppose that I am 
told a dozen times a day by different persons 
that it is a fine day, or a wet day, or that it 
was cold yesterday, or will rain to-morrow. 
The boy who opens the door for me as I leave 
my house gives me his opinion as to the 
weather, the man who runs the elevator down- 



And What We Gain 205 

town does the same thing, the waiter who 
brings me some luncheon gives me his views 
on the weather, past, present, and future, and 
as I ride home the conductor, if he finds time, 
tells me what kind of weather we are having. 
At the risk of seeming crusty to a degree, I will 
confess that I care for no man's opinion about 
the weather, unless it is the government ex- 
pert's, and not much for his. 

It is assumed that in town one meets with 
people who have ideas — authors, writers, 
thinkers, men of science, whose words are full 
of inspiration. Perhaps I have been rather 
fortunate in meeting with people whose names 
are heard frequently. Yet I cannot say that 
the loss of such opportunities as I have en- 
joyed in this respect ever worries me. Take 
the authors and the writers, for instance. The 
man who has time and leisure may occasionally, 
if he likes that sort of thing, meet the author 
whose novels are most read at the moment. 
But it is extremely doubtful whether this 
gentleman will talk half so well in the drawing- 
room as he does in his book. These authors 
are devoting the best part of their lives to 



2o6 What We Lose 

thinking of something brilliant wherewith to 
amuse me ; they polish their work, going over 
it scores of times, finally presenting it to me 
nicely printed and illustrated, if necessary. 
And I may listen as long or as little as I like 
to what they may have to say. In days when 
there were no such things as cheap printing and 
magazines, I suppose that the talk of the town 
was essential to many people. To-day, the 
author who has a clever idea sells it. The 
very dependence upon gossip for ideas betrays 
lack of reading. When for a few cents we can 
buy the results of the best thinking of our best 
writers, why should we run after the writers 
themselves? Of course I am not talking about 
what men of high position in the literary world 
or the social world may be able to get out of the 
life of cities ; I am speaking of what the poor 
man, hard driven to earn the few thousand 
dollars a year needed to keep his children in 
bread and butter, will probably, judging by 
my own experience and that of some of my 
friends, be able to think of as a possible loss 
in considering the advisability of deserting the 
city for the country. 



And What We Gain 207 

I am not sure but that we enjoy the work of 
some men all the better because we do not 
know them personally. At a distance they are 
heroes, more or less. I have heard some peo- 
ple say that their enjoyment in the magic of 
Richard Wagner's works would be unquestion- 
ably deepened had they not had the misfortune 
to meet the man himself — a great genius who 
was utterly indifferent to what people thought 
of him, and utterly careless of the wounds he 
inflicted. I esteem it rather a piece of good 
fortune that I never saw the greatest musician 
that the world has ever seen or probably will 
see for generations to come. The personality 
of the man was not a pleasant one, and I be- 
lieve that I am justified in saying this, notwith- 
standing some attempts to make out a different 
case. A famous Leipsic lawyer, a Jew, has in 
his study a marble bust of Wagner, with a 
wreath of laurel on its brow and a rope around 
its neck. "The one," he says to visitors, 
"shows what I think of the composer, the 
other what I think of the man." And the 
Jews are not alone in their detestation of 
the man, while confessing to an unlimited 



2o8 What We Lose 

admiration for the musician. His pamphlets 
against the Jew in music, his caricatures of the 
French in defeat, were only a small part of the 
offensive, wounding things that Wagner allowed 
himself to utter. The anecdotes of the man's 
arrogance are many. I know of one young 
American who would enjoy Wagner's music 
more had he never attempted to interview the 
composer of Tristan. This particular enthusi- 
ast had been sent by one of our newspapers to 
Bayreuth for the express purpose of telling 
Wagner how much the great world of America 
delighted in the master's works, and to get 
from him some sort of pleasant acknowledg- 
ment, if possible, of the courtesy. The scribe 
arrived in Bayreuth and wasted a score of 
cards and letters without obtaining the promise 
of an interview. The situation was becoming 
desperate — his newspaper wanted an interview. 
The young man learned that Wagner was ac- 
customed to stroll every morning in a certain 
wood soon after sunrise. He waylaid the 
composer and found him seated upon a bench. 
Now Wagner did not love newspapers or news- 
paper men, and he had good reason. But 



And What We Gain 209 

surely an exception might be made in favor 
of America. There he had not been attacked 
or ridiculed by newspaper men, for the very 
good reason that his name was scarcely known, 
to say nothing of his music. The interviewer 
made a bold attack. Mustering up his best 
German, he began his address, Wagner gazing 
dreamily at him and not moving a muscle: "I 
am commissioned by a great newspaper of that 
great Republic over the seas, where your music 
is already a household word ( !), to tell you of 
the deep admiration that exists for you there, 
and to ask you for some words of greeting in 
return." Not a word did the great man vouch 
in reply. Perhaps he failed to catch my mean- 
ing, thought the young man ; and so he re- 
peated his little speech. Then Wagner pointed 
towards the gates of the park, muttering a few 
German words, a free but fair translation of 
which might be — "Get out! " While this was 
not the sort of interview which had been hoped 
for, it did not prevent the interviewer from 
making a column talk with Wagner, in which 
the composer was made to bubble over with 

gratitude to America and Americans. Those 
14 



2IO What We Lose 

in the secret knew that the interview upon 
Wagner's part consisted of but two words. I 
am not defending the institution of interview- 
ing, and I do not doubt that "Wagner may have 
had excellent reasons for objecting to such an 
intrusion ; the world may have lost some musi- 
cal thought of the utmost beauty by the enter- 
prise, so-called, of this American ; I am simply 
giving an illustration of what may be lost by 
too near a view of a great man. 

The art of writing most beautifully upon 
charity may exist in a man whose life knows 
not a charitable instinct or act. The man who 
can talk and write exquisitely about love to- 
wards one's neighbor may be conspicuous for a 
vile temper at home. The novelist who de- 
lights me in print may, and probably will, disap- 
point me in person. Upon the whole, while I 
can look back to some pleasure derived from 
the talk of men whose writings are famous, I 
doubt whether the disappointments do not out- 
weigh the pleasures. Certainly the satisfaction 
which I have found in meeting persons who 
write well has been infinitesimal as compared 
with the pleasure which these same persons 



And What We Gain 211 

have given me by their books. As to the so- 
called literary evenings of great cities — occa- 
sions upon which some person in public view 
at the moment is placed upon exhibition by 
Mrs. Leo Hunter, I know of few less dreary 
ways of wasting precious time. 

I presume that in this matter of house, 
grounds, clothes, and other signs of outward 
luxury, the fact that poverty is considered 
synonymous with inferiority is primarily due to 
simple causes. I wear a patched coat ; there- 
fore I have no money wherewith to buy a new 
one. The absence of money implies inability 
to earn money ; therefore I am not so energetic 
or so clever as some of my fellow-men who 
earn more money and wear good coats. In a 
country where the measure of a man is the 
amount of money or property that he has been 
able to acquire, either through industry or 
luck in gambling, it is inevitable that the 
money standard, or the coat standard, should 
acquire the weight of a moral law. The man 
who wears a patched coat and only wears 
gloves when the weather makes the gloves a 
physical comfort, must be an inferior sort of 



212 What We Lose 

man, because he has evidently not kept pace 
with his fellows in the race. In the Old World 
the struggle for money and material prosperity 
has not been so exhausting these last few hun- 
dred years, and has not excluded spiritual 
things so completely as with us ; and there we 
find, in consequence, that the outward signs of 
the, ability to earn money are not deemed so 
essential to the fixing of a man's standing in 
the community. To wear a patched coat and 
to work with one's hands in a garden, do not 
in themselves stamp a man in France and Eng- 
land as an inferior person. I was particularly 
impressed with this when some years ago an 
English clergyman — a man of much culture 
and reading — gave up his cure in a fashionable 
summer resort not a thousand miles from New 
York, because he found that his love of work- 
ing his own garden was looked upon with sur- 
prise, to use no stronger term, and he was made 
to feel that his parishioners considered the 
dignity of their church endangered by their 
pastor's curious fancy for digging. In Eng- 
land it had been his custom to raise his own 
vegetables. Here it was not thought dignified 



And What We Gain 213 

for the pastor to work like a common laborer, 
hanging his coat on a bramble bush, and one 
of his vestrymen hinted that the church might 
be able to squeeze out enough money to pro- 
vide a gardener for the pastor. The pastor did 
not want a gardener, and he gave way to some 
one else who would keep his coat on and his 
hands clean. It may be said that instead of 
resigning his place, this victim of the Philistines 
should have preached a few sermons upon the 
dignity of manual labor, recalling the fact that 
Christ was a carpenter ; but the depth of such 
prejudice is beyond the plummet of argument. 
The commonplace mind is never tolerant of 
other views. ^For years manual labor, because 
it does not bring in much money, has been 
looked upon as the work of the inferior man ; 
the ambition of every one has been to get 
away from it. (_The farmer's son deserts the 
farm; the carpenter's son leaves the bench; 
any occupation which allows a man to wear a 
coat and keep his hands white is considered 
better than manual labor. It is commonly 
considered that of all the occupations farming 
pays the least money in proportion to the care 



2 14 What We Lose 

and labor expended. Therefore farming and 
gardening must be the last occupation that a 
man of parts will take up. To devote hours 
to digging or gardening or any work which a 
laborer at a dollar a day will accomplish as well, 
is considered folly when a dollar an hour can 
be earned at other work. If the accumulation 
of money is the end of life, I suppose that 
public opinion is right ; but even upon this 
point it may be doubted whether or not in the 
long run the man who acquires sound health 
by systematic out-door work does not stand a 
better chance in the race for money than nine 
tenths of his fellow-men. 
(Dress is not an art founded upon fixed princi- 
ples of beauty. What one generation admires 
the next will ridicule. Perhaps the time will 
come when patches will be in fashion. J We 
already find it possible to admire Oriental rugs 
in tatters, and vast sums are paid for bits of Per- 
sian carpets about to fall in pieces. Does not 
every one know that should the Prince of Wales 
appear in public with a shabby coat and a patch 
upon both knees, that patches would appear 
upon every fashionable knee, and that un- 



And What We Gain 215 

patched trousers would be viewed with suspic- 
ion P^There are no end of stories which illustrate 
how strongly the traits of our simian ancestors 
are marked in us. Some years ago the Prince 
of Wales could not find the overcoat he wanted 
when about to leave for the opera one evening, 
and picked up a rough shooting-jacket he had 
brought from the Highlands; result: ulsters 
appeared all over the world. More recently, 
the same leader of fashion dropped one glove 
in the street and put on another of a different 
color; result: people begin to wear gloves that 
do not match. The Prince of Wales is grow- 
ing bald ; result : the sale of magic hair-growers 
has fallen off by two thirds in the United 
Kingdom. The traces of the monkey are to 
be seen all around us. Not one man in a thou- 
sand knows that the two buttons to be found 
upon the backs of most coats date from the 
time when men needed these buttons to hold 
on their sword-belts. The swords have gone, 
but we continue to insist upon the buttons 
because "everybody wears them." The necktie 
once held the shirt together at the throat, and 
thus served a useful purpose. Buttons now fill 



2i6 What We Lose 

th< office* but the tie ^irvivesv aad the 
who goetit without a aecktie is h^d up to sconu 
A score ol ituch custoois which have aow no 
other wqurraat thaa that '*ever\' oae else does 
so *' might be ^ivecu Yet it is more diflEK^ilt to 
teach a boy the aecessity of truth titan the 
lolly oi too much atteatioa to hfe dotites*.* As 
things go ther^ is a reasoa m the present insist- 
ence upon Siie teachers i the man who wishes 
to be well paid must make people believe that 
he IS; worth large pay axtd. that other people 
thiiia^ so» If he is richly dressed, it fe a s%a 
that hfe seniices have been considered worthy 
of a rich reward. " It pays to dress well, " has 
become a maxim with us* and there is reason, 
behind it. It does pay — m money. But we 
must take care titat we do not pay too much 
loctiitat money. 

The matter of clothes has been sugge^ed as 
offering possible obstacles to a life without 
money, and the topic has been treated so fully. 
and so much better b^- '"^— r^u than I can 
hope to treat it, that I ^ . ..re to qtiote at 
length from his U It is begging the 

(^estion to assume tnat because one ma^ afe« 



And Wli.-il Wc (i.iin 217 

tempt to !/r.\ ;i ;/r<:;i\. rl'.al of life out of com- 
paratively few dollars, the result will Ijc r;i;'/. 
for the family. Thoreau is elofjuent upon tlic- 
subject of [matches, anrl could see nothin!,j t'> he 
ashamed of in them. Since his flay the matter 
has Ij'.cri larjijcly simplified for the weaklings 
who flo not like to excite corniri'.rit even of 
pcopU^ who l)av<: never pondered ujjon the 
beauty of patche;,. Clothing, and every other 
commodity which is largely made by machinery, 
has been cheaj^e-ned in jjroportioti to th': part 
of the work performed by machinery, and <:vcry 
year this part grows larger and larger. Conse- 
quently, the amount of clothing which can be 
bought for a day's labor is six or seven times 
as great as it was one hundred years ago, anrl 
three or four times as great as when the hermit 
of Walclen jotted down sarcastic notes about 
the man who was not ashamed of going around 
with a broken leg, but very much ashamed of a 
broken jjair of trousers. This process is going 
on so steadily that it is easy to foresee the day 
when a few days' work upon the part of the 
laborer or mechanic will be sufficient to pro- 
vide himself and his family with unpatched and 



2i8 What We Lose 

well-made clothing for the year. I have a pre- 
judice against patches to the extent of disliking 
anything that will attract the attention of Tom, 
Dick, and Harry, and their female counterparts. 
If for a few dollars spent in clothing which is 
whole I can save myself from their attentions, 
it is money well spent, and the same thing holds 
good with regard to the clothing of my wife 
and children. We might spend a few dollars 
less every year upon bonnets and dresses, but 
the question is: Would it pay? We are not 
living in the woods, and our desire is to avoid 
attracting attention. 

To go back to Thoreau, he says in Walden : 

As for clothing, to come at once to the practical 
part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by 
the love of novelty, and a regard for the opinions 
of men in procuring it than by a true utility. Let 
him who has work to do recollect that the object 
of clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat, and, 
secondly, in this state of society, to cover naked- 
ness, and he may judge how much of any necessary 
or important work may be accomplished without 
adding to his wardrobe. Kings and queens who 
wear a suit but once, though made by some tailor 



And What We Gain 219 

or dressmaker to their majesties, cannot know the 
comfort of wearing a suit that fits. They are no 
better than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes 
on. Every day our garments become more assimi- 
lated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the 
wearer's character, until we hesitate to lay them 
aside, without such delay and medical appliances 
and some such solemnity even as our bodies. No 
man ever stood the lower in my estimation for hav- 
ing a patch in his clothes, yet I am sure that there 
is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, 
or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to 
have a sound conscience. But even if the rent is 
not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is im- 
providence. I sometimes try my acquaintances by 
such tests as this: Who would wear a patch, or two 
extra seams only, over the knee ? Most behaved 
as if they believed that their prospects for life 
would be ruined if they should do it. It would be 
easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg 
than with a broken pantaloon. Often if an acci- 
dent happens to a gentleman's legs, they can be 
mended, but if a similar accident happens to the 
legs of his pantaloons there is no help for it, for he 
considers not what is truly respectable, but what is 
respected. We know but few men, a great many 



2 20 What We Lose 

coats and breeches. Dress a scarecrow in your 
last shift, you standing shiftless by, who would not 
sooner salute the scarecrow? Passing a cornfield 
the other day close by a hat and coat on a stake, I 
recognized the owner of the farm. He was only a 
little more weather-beaten than when I saw him 
last. I have heard of a dog that barked at every 
stranger who approached his master's premises with 
clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief. 
It is an interesting question how far men would re- 
tain their relative rank if they were divested of 
their clothes. Could you in such a case tell surely 
of any company of civilized men which belonged to 
the most respected class? When Madame Pfeiffer, 
in her adventurous travels round the world from 
east to west, had got so near home as Asiatic 
Russia she says she felt the necessity of wearing 
other than a travelling dress when she went to 
meet the authorities, for she " was now in a civil- 
ized county where people are judged of by their 
clothes! " Even in our democratic New England 
towns the accidental possession of wealth and its 
manifestation in dress and equipage alone obtain for 
the possessor almost universal respect. But they who 
yield such respect, numerous as they are, are so far 
heathen, and need to have a missionary sent to them. 



And What We Gain 221 

A man who has at length found something to do 
will not need to get a new suit to do it in ; for him 
the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for 
an indeterminate period. Old shoes will serve a 
hero longer than they have served his valet — if a 
hero ever has a valet; — bare feet are older than 
shoes, and he can make them do. Only they who 
go to soirees and legislative halls must have new 
coats, coats to change as often as the man changes 
in them. But if my jacket and trousers, my hat 
and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do, 
will they not ? Who ever saw his old clothes, his 
old coat actually worn out, resolved into its primi- 
tive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity 
to bestow it on some poor boy, by him, perchance, 
to be bestowed on one poorer still, or shall we say 
richer, who could do with less ? I say beware of 
all enterprises that require new clothes and not 
rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a 
new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit ? 
If you have any enterprise before you, try it in 
your old clothes. All men want not something to 
do with, but something to do, or rather something 
to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new 
suit, however dirty or ragged the old, until we have 
so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, 



2 22 What We Lose 

that we feel like new men in the old, and that to 
retain it would be like keeping new wine in old 
bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the 
fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon re- 
tires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus, also, the 
snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy 
coat, by an internal industry and expansion; for 
clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. 
Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false 
colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our 
own opinion as well as that of mankind. 

When I ask for a garment of a particular form, 
my tailoress tells me gravely: " They do not make 
them so now," not emphasizing the " They " at all, 
as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the 
Fates, and I find it difficult to get made what I 
want, simply because she cannot believe that I 
mean what I say — that I am so rash. When I hear 
this oracular sentence, I am for a moment ab- 
sorbed in thought, emphasizing to myself each 
word separately that I may come at the meaning 
of it, that I may find out by what degree of 
consanguinity "They" are related to me, and 
what authority they may have in an affair which 
affects me so nearly; and finally, I am inclined to 
answer her with equal mystery, and without any 



And What We Gain 223 

more emphasis on the "They." It is true they 
did not make them so recently, but they do so now. 
We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but 
Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full 
authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a 
traveller's cap, and all the monkeys in America do 
the same. I sometimes despair of getting anything 
quite simple and honest done in this world by the 
help of men. They would have to be passed 
through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old 
notions out of them, so that they would not soon 
get upon their legs again, and then there would be 
some one in the company with a maggot in his head, 
hatched from an egg deposited there nobody knows 
when, for not even fire kills these things, and you 
would have lost your labor. 

On the whole, I think that it cannot be main- 
tained that dressing has in this or any other country 
risen to the dignity of an art. At present men 
make shift to wear what they can get. Like ship- 
wrecked sailors they put on what they can find on 
the beach, and at a little distance, whether of space 
or time, laugh at each other's masquerade. Every 
generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows 
religiously the new. We are amused at beholding 
the costume of Henry VIII. or Queen Elizabeth, 



224 What We Lose 

as much as if it was that of the King and Queen of 
the Cannibal Islands. All costume off a man is 
pitiful or grotesque. It is only the serious eye 
peering from and the sincere life passed within it 
which restrain laughter and consecrate the costume 
of any people. Let Harlequin be taken with a fit 
of the colic, and the trappings will have to serve 
that mood too. When the soldier is hit by a can- 
non-ball, rags are as becoming as purple. The 
childish and savage taste of men and women for 
new patterns keeps how many shaking and squint- 
ing through kaleidoscopes that they may discover 
the particular figure which this generation requires 
to-day. 

In writing of clothing, I wish, however, to 
make plain that inexpensive clothes do not 
imply shabbiness or carelessness in personal 
appearance, but simply that the blouse of the 
French workman is better than the dirty linen 
shirt of the American workman. To be ap- 
propriately dressed does not, in these days of 
corduroys and flannel shirts, cost either much 
money or time, and the man who allows him- 
self and his children to go dressed as scare- 
crows misses one element for good in country 



And What We Gain 225 

life. Clothing which may be out of place in 
town may become just the thing in the country 
life, even though its cost is insignificant as 
compared to the dress of the city man. Were 
my income twenty times as large as it is, I 
should not care to dress better than I do. For 
the children blue-flannel dresses are cheap, but 
could anything be more appropriate for the life 
on the water which they lead? 

In one of his books on fishing, Frank Forester 
(H. W. Herbert) says that if he led the life of 
a backwoodsman, and dwelt in a cabin on top 
of a mountain, he should still put on evening 
dress for dinner. This is an exaggeration, but 
there is truth behind. Slovenly, ill-fitting, 
dirty, ragged clothing may lead to slovenly 
habits of mind, and are not the necessary ac- 
companiments of such life as I prescribe. 

One of my critics, for whom I have great 
personal deference, tells me that my theory of 
life tends to a relapse into barbarism, and in 
illustration of the truth of his position, he 
pointed one evening to a music-stand near the 
piano with the remark: "With your ideas, that 
stand would never be made of mahogany and 

IS 



226 What We Lose 

elaborately ornamented, but would be of pine, 
perhaps stained." 

Well, suppose it were. I am inclined to think 
that the greater use of common material, stained 
pine and other cheap wood, in the houses of 
people of taste is a distinct indication of a 
needed reform. Take the little music-stand in 
illustration. Its purpose is to hold a number 
of music books and loose sheets of music. It 
has three or four shelves, and is so made as to 
stand in a corner near the piano and take up 
but little room. It is made of mahogany, 
highly polished, and is ornamented, as most 
people would call it, with a sort of stucco- 
beading, which to me is distasteful. But it 
cost money, and therefore has its reasons for 
being in certain eyes. I have forgotten what 
it cost me — probably from fifteen to twenty 
dollars. Thanks to the growth of good taste, 
I can to-day pick out from half a dozen books 
I know of a little design for a music-stand, or 
sketch it myself, and the nearest carpenter will 
make the thing in a day at a cost of two or 
three dollars for wood, labor, and staining. 
The result will be something which is pleasanter 



And What We Gain 227 

to my eye, and I will venture to say to the 
eyes of nine out of ten persons of educated 
taste. The other fifteen or sixteen dollars 
saved may be devoted to books, pictures, 
music — any of the things which really add 
something to life. The music-stand of stained 
pine will do its work just as well as the one 
made of mahogany, inlaid with stucco beading 
— in fact it v/ill do it better, for it will not need 
a periodic rubbing on the part of the parlor 
maid to keep it bright and polished, and it can 
be moved about when occasion demands, as it 
weighs but little. It is as strong as the other, 
and it will last a hundred years. 

The music-stand is typical of the whole 
theory upon which I have preached so persist- 
ently and to some extent practised. In every 
affair of life, we have been insisting upon 
mahogany, with stucco trimmings, and wasting 
money which might have gone far towards buy- 
ing books and sunlight. It is a hopeful sign 
when we find the saving remnant, as Matthew 
Arnold has it, taking to stained pine instead of 
mahogany with stucco trimmings. I have a 
sincere love for pretty things. I will walk a 



228 What We Lose 

mile to see a set of china exquisitely decorated. 
Some Persian rugs give me as much pleasure as 
many pictures. A noble house is something 
that I should like to own. But there has al- 
ways been the question : Is it going to pay me 
to have china at my table which costs one hun- 
dred dollars, or a rug before the fire which 
costs half as much again? It is all a question 
of whether I will give up something else. Shall 
I exchange a week of sunlight for the sake of 
that dinner service, and another week for the 
sake of that rug, and another month for the 
sake of living in the house which pleases me? 
— and so on. After weighing the losses and 
the gains pretty carefully, I say No. 

A far more serious objection which is made 
to my plan of life is that it is not fair to my 
children. I have had the advantage of good 
schools, I have been sent abroad to study, I 
have had years of life among people who know 
something of books and art. It may be very 
well for me to desert from the ranks, and settle 
down in the woods, intellectually speaking, of 
this end of Long Island. This is a serious 
question. Had I never conceived the idea of 



And What We Gain 229 

seceding, I should at this time be paying rent 
for a little house or an apartment in some part 
of New York City, or what is more likely 
I should live most of the year in some of the 
little settlements, within easy railroad distance 
from New York, which dot the Jersey hills. 
Years ago. before my eyes were opened, I paid 
seven hundred dollars a year for a cottage in 
just such a settlement. With that expense 
and the cost of three months' board in New 
York, — for newspaper work makes it necessary 
for me to be in New York at least that length 
of time, — I may say that my rent was about a 
thousand dollars, a moderate sum, and yet large 
enough, when taken in connection with the 
other expenses of servants and housekeeping, 
to necessitate pretty steady drudgery upon my 
part the year round. In the meantime, my 
children attended a little school which was 
quite as good as any preparatory school of the 
same type to be found in the city. 

From the experience that I have had with 
children's schools, I have been led to think 
that the most pretentious are often the least 
productive of any good to the child, and I 



230 What We Lose 

presume that most parents will agree in con- 
demning the ultra-fashionable and most ex- 
pensive schools as wonderfully well designed to 
make a child all that it should not be. With 
the primary schools there is scarcely any choice 
to be made between those of the city and the 
country. The home life of the child before 
twelve years of age counts for so much in form- 
ing the character and the intellectual judgment 
of the child that schools, good or bad, are not 
of great weight. If anything, the little, un- 
pretentious district school of the smallest 
country village is better than the city school, 
because there are fewer children, and conse- 
quently their idiosyncrasies are more likely to 
have full play. The worst that can be said of 
our public-school system is that it tends to 
eliminate individuality and make each child the 
counterpart of the standard child, often a very 
low standard. At the most impressionable 
age, we send our children to schools in which 
the effort is to turn out boys and girls all 
knowing the same thing, taking the same view 
of every topic, and approaching more closely 
to a type with which educated persons have 



And What We Gain 231 

really very little sympathy. It is a standard 
in which the commonplace dominates. Mat- 
thew Arnold attributed the uninteresting char- 
acter and monotony of much of the casual talk 
which he heard in our public places to the uni- 
versal custom of sending children to the public 
schools. Spencer holds that there is no harm, 
but rather good, in allowing a child to grow up 
a healthy animal almost ignorant of ordinary 
school rudiments until he reaches the age of 
eight or ten. By that time it is to be hoped 
that he will be less plastic, and that the in- 
fluence of home surroundings will have brought 
out an individuality not to be effaced by the 
routine schooling of the next few years. The 
tendency to do away with book lessons for 
young children has always seemed to me one 
of the healthiest signs of the day, and with my 
own children I have had no compunctions of 
conscience in teaching them to swim and row 
and to love fishing and hunting before they 
knew how to read or write a line. The worst 
that could happen to them would be to have 
them turn out to be counterparts of the com- 
monplace type I find in most of the pubHc 



232 What We Lose 

schools. The boy who at the age of twelve is 
a good swimmer, a good sailor, fond of shoot- 
ing, fishing, and out-door sports, is able to read 
and write, and has a genuine love and appre- 
ciation of a score of good books, and not a 
little good music, is pretty sure to get along in 
whatever school he finds himself, for whatever 
he knows, he will know thoroughly and not 
superficially. 

(The real school is, after all, the home school, 
of which the father and mother are the head 
teachers. Here, again, is one reason why life 
in the wilderness is an advantage to the child. 
He is with his father most of the day, and if 
the household has any atmosphere of culture 
about it, he is pretty sure to absorb some of it. 
In city life, the father may be seen at break- 
fast, and possibly for a moment before the 
children go to bed, but that, as a rule, is all, 
except on Sunday, when he is often too tired 
to bother with the children and too unfamiliar 
with them to take much interest in their do- 
ings. More than half the pleasure that I get 
out of my country life is due to constant asso- 
ciation with the children. The boat seldom 



And What We Gain 233 

sails away without three or four of them on 
board, they are never left behind when we start 
for a day's outing, they know as much about 
the garden as I do, and probably to this active 
open-air life they owe largely their strength 
and ruddy cheeks. I have tried both ways of 
life, and whatever may be said in favor of the 
city so far as adults are concerned, there are 
no two ways of thinking so far as concerns the 
children. After a few years, when it becomes 
necessary to fit them for active life, I suppose 
that the boys will go to college, and I am not 
at all afraid of their ability to hold their own 
and to get all the good that may be obtained 
by a struggle for wealth if they should choose 
to strive for it. As to the girls, it may be 
said that in the wilderness they would grow 
up ignorant of most accomplishments valued 
in young women, such as music, painting, etc. 
But here, again, it is a question of home in- 
fluence. Inasmuch as my girls will hear at 
home twenty times as much good music as 
the average New York girl even in fashionable 
life is likely to hear, and a hundred times 
as much talk about it, there is no fear that if 



234 What We Lose 

they have any capacity for the divine art, it 
will not make itself felt. It is so rare to find 
among even our so-called best people of the 
town any understanding or appreciation of the 
meaning and beauty of literature, music, and 
art, that the fear that my children may not 
know something of these things because they 
do not habitually associate with these so-called 
best people, seems really comical to me. The 
well-to-do people of the city will spend money 
upon anything but art ; they will cheerfully 
lavish dollars upon mahogany furniture with 
stucco veneering, but it will never occur to 
them to try pine and have their children taught 
to understand a Beethoven sonata. It has 
been said that under such a system as mine 
my boys are likely to grow up fishermen, and 
nothing more, and that my girls will probably 
know how to make good butter. Even taking 
this material view of the matter, I am not at 
all sure but that an intelligent fisherman who 
lives in comfort the year round, harassed by no 
anxieties, and getting the most out of the sea- 
breeze and the sunlight, has not a far better lot 
than his city brother who wears more expen- 



And What We Gain 235 

sive clothes and talks about the price of lard or 
leather instead of the fish and the tides. As 
to the essentials of intellectual culture, the 
fisherman with a taste for reading and his long 
winter evenings has by far the greater oppor- 
tunities. 

With regard to the physical advantages of 
country life modern science has brought statis- 
tics to bear. Not a physician can be found 
who does not preach the value of better air 
than can be found in cities. 

Upon this subject Dr. G. B. Barron, in a 
paper entitled "Town-Life as a Cause of De- 
generacy," read at a recent meeting of the 
British Association, at Bath, England, said : 

I venture to advance the proposition that the 
*' vital force " of the town-dweller is inferior to the 
" vital force " of the countryman. The evidence 
of this is to be found in a variety of ways. The 
general unfitness and incapability of the dwellers in 
our large hives of industry to undergo continued 
violent exertion, or to sustain long endurance of 
fatigue, is a fact requiring little evidence to estab- 
lish; nor can they tolerate the withdrawal of food 
under sustained physical effort for any prolonged 



236 What We Lose 

period as compared with the dwellers in rural dis- 
tricts. It may be affirmed also that, through the 
various factors at work night and day upon the con- 
stitution of the poorer class of town-dwellers, 
various forms of disease are developed, of which 
pulmonary consumption is the most familiar, and 
which is doing its fatal work in a lavish and uner- 
ring fashion. Thus it may be conceded as an 
established fact that the townsman is, on the whole, 
constitutionally dwarfed in tone, and his life, man 
for man, shorter, weaker, and more uncertain than 
the countryman's. I hold the opinion that the 
deterioration is more in physique, as implied in 
the loss of physical or muscular power of the 
body, the attenuation of muscular fibre, the loss 
of integrity of cell-structure, and consequent liabil- 
ity to the invasion of disease, rather than in actual 
stature of inch-measurement. The true causes of 
this deterioration are neither very obscure nor far 
to seek. They are bad air and bad habits. 

Taking these causes in the order in which I have 
placed them, but without reference to their relative 
intensity, I think bad air is a potent factor of en- 
feeblement. Included in the phrase "bad air" 
are bad sanitation and overcrowding. I have no 
doubt in my mind that it has a powerful and never- 



And What We Gain 237 

ceasing action, paramount and decisive, on the 
physical frames of young and old town-dwellers, 
producing deterioration of physique, lowered vi- 
tality, and constitutional decay. For over thirty 
years I have been hammering away at this question 
of " bad air " and " bad sanitation " as the prime 
causes of impairment of health and race, and the 
more I consider it the more I am convinced of the 
soundness of my conclusions. A great deal has 
been said on this subject, and it is not difficult to 
adduce conclusive evidence from a large variety of 
reliable sources in proof of the deleterious effects 
of impure air on the animal economy. Consump- 
tion is the best type of degenerative action and loss 
of vital energy. It stands out in bold relief as the 
disease most rife wherever foul air exists. The 
significance and value of fresh air were recognized 
by the old fathers of medicine. Hippocrates was 
accustomed to advise a walk in fresh air of ten or 
fifteen miles daily. Aretseus, Celsus, and Pliny 
speak of the good effect of fresh air; and our great 
English physician, Sydenham, did the same thing. 
Dr. Guy found that of 104 compositors who worked 
in rooms of less than 500 cubic feet of air for each 
person, 12.5 per cent had had spitting of blood; of 
115 in rooms of from 500 to 600 cubic feet, 4.35 per 



2 38 What We Lose 

cent, showed signs of consumption ; and in loo who 
worked in rooms of more than 600 cubic feet 
capacity, less than 2 per cent, had spit blood. 
Consumption is only one of the long list of evils to 
which the town-dweller is exposed. It may be well 
to mention that the Labrador fishermen and the 
fishermen of the Hebrides, with plenty of fresh air, 
are practically exempt from this disease. The 
absence of pure air acts upon the animal economy 
in much the same way as the withdrawal of light 
on plants, the result being pallor and feebleness of 
constitutional vigor. This effect ramifies in every 
direction; the tissues of which the human body is 
composed lose their tonicity and contractile power, 
and even mental integrity may be more or less 
affected. The pent-up denizens of the courts and 
alleys of our large towns, surrounded on every side 
by imperfect light, bad air, and the general aspects 
of low life, necessarily degenerate in physical com- 
petency, and their offspring is of a feeble type. 

The digestive capability of the town-dweller is of 
a lower standard and less capable of dealing with 
the ordinary articles of diet, than the latter. Con- 
sequently town-dwellers live on such food as they 
can digest without suffering — bread, fish, and meat; 
above all, the last. The sapid, tasty flesh of ani- 



And What We Gain 239 

mals, which sits sHghtly upon the stomach, gives an 
acceptable feeHng of satiety, so pleasant to ex- 
perience. Such selection is natural and intelligible, 
but it is fraught with danger. I quote from a 
former paper: " The chief diet selected by the 
town-dweller begets a condition known to doctors 
as the uric-acid diathesis, with its many morbid 
consequences. Pulmonary phthisis and Bright's 
disease seem Dame Nature's means of weeding 
out degenerating town-dwellers. " Such are some 
of the medical aspects of the case. 

Mr. Henry T. Finck says in his Romantic 
Love and Personal Beauty : 

I am convinced from many experiments that the 
value of country air lies partly in its tonic fra- 
grance, partly in the absence of depressing foul 
odors. I Now the tonic value of fragrant meadow 
or forest air lies in this — that it causes us involun- 
tarily to breathe deeply, in order to drink in as 
many mouthfuls of this luscious aerial Tokay as 
possible; whereas in the city the air is, — well, say 
unfragrant and uninviting, and the constant fear 
of gulping down a' pint of deadly sewer-gas dis- 
courages deep breathing.) The general pallor and 
nervousness of New York people have often been 



240 What We Lose and Gain 

noticed. The cause is obvious. New York has 
the dirtiest streets of any city in the world, except 
Constantinople and Canton; and, moreover, it is 
surrounded by oil-refineries, which sometimes for 
days poison the whole city with the stifling fumes 
of petroleum, so that one hardly dares to breathe 
at all. 




THE DANGERS OF CUTTING LOOSE 
FROM TOWN DRUDGERY 

THE late Matthew Arnold found nothing 
more characteristic to say about us than 
that we Americans and our institutions are un- 
interesting. The length of our railroads, our 
piles of money, our big buildings, our vast 
spaces on land and water did not impress him. 
The human interest was lacking partly because 
so much of our time or attention and our talk 
was taken up with these other material matters 
in themselves not peculiarly interesting. Sir 
Lepel Grififin, in a harsher review of us and our 
institutions, says that he would rather live 
almost anywhere than here, and again he re- 
marks that we are uninteresting. As a nation, 
we may have attained to a higher level in ma- 
terial matters than the great nations of the Old 
World ; but the work of our public schools in 
turning out vast armies of pupils, knowing all 

i6 

241 



242 The Dangers of Cutting Loose 

the same things and viewing everything from 
the same standpoint, necessarily implies mo- 
notony. In our views of what makes a life 
worth living there is pretty certain to be a 
good deal of this monotony. Ask half a hun- 
dred men and women, taken at random, what 
makes life worth living, and certainly the great 
majority will say that a life of luxurious idle- 
ness offers the greatest opportunities. At least 
this is what they mean, although they will hesi- 
tate to use the word idleness, as contrary to 
good morals. Given good health and an ample 
income, that life is worth living — to the liver 
at least — may be considered as sure to follow 
in the general estimation of people. Never- 
theless most of us can point out some people 
who have health and more money than they 
know what to do with, and yet do not live a 
life which we consider the best that they could 
lead. 

II will define a life worth living as the one 
which offers out-door work and sport, freedom 
from anxiety, and plenty of intellectual exer- 
cise. I doubt whether a man who passes more 
than three fourths of his waking hours in-doors ^ 



From Town Drudgery 243 

can remain a healthy animal or get the enjoy- 
ment out of life which the mere sense of phy- 
sical well-being gives. The doctors tell us that 
the physical trend of people who live in great 
cities is one of steady deterioration ; the cities 
must be constantly recruited from the country. 
To me the persistent city man who never goes 
beyond the brick walls and paved streets is en- 
titled to pity very much upon the same ground 
as are the animals we see in our menageries. 
Centuries of wrong living have evolved a peo- 
ple who stand confinement and bad air wonder- 
fully well, but Nature takes her revenge in one 
way or another. Nevertheless, we stand our 
artificial existence so well that most of us for- 
get that it is an artificial existence. As animals 
we ought, by rights, to be in the sunlight from 
morning till night. Our ancestors of a few 
thousand years ago, who foraged the woods 
and waters for birds and fish which they de- 
voured raw, slept well in their caves after the 
day's chase, and knew nothing of half the 
ills we now live in dread of. When Thoreau 
notes that the sports of civilized man were the 
labors of uncivilized man, does he not indict 



244 The Dangers of Cutting Loose 

civilization ? Man has given up play as a 
means of getting a living. To some extent we 
go back to the rational life when we can. The 
rich Wall Street gambler, the rich dealer in 
lard or leather sometimes goes back to the 
woods in summer or ploughs the wave in his 
yacht. But very few of us get rich — perhaps 
one in a thousand. Is there no way of getting 
back to a rational life without first winning a 
fortune, something which comes to so few? 

I am aware that here many a reader — pro- 
vided I am so fortunate as to have many readers 
— will say : "Oh, we have heard all this before; 
it is the old story of moving to the country in 
order to raise cabbages for a living. It is one 
more variation upon the Ten Acres EnougJi 
idea." To some extent it is a variation upon 
that famous book, but with a difference. The 
hundreds of writers who have taken up the 
chief idea of Ten Acres Enough — the possibility 
of earning a livelihood by out-door work, gar- 
dening, fishing, etc. — have, without exception, 
so far as I know, begun with the assumption 
that when life becomes impossible in town then 
the country should be sought. In .one case it 



From Town Drudgery 245 

is the broken-down merchant, tired of meeting 
notes, tired of the long struggle to ward off 
bankruptcy, who finally says to himself: "I 
will sell out my business and with the proceeds 
buy a strawberry patch, upon which I can raise 
enough fruit to support my family in comfort." 
And he does it — in the book. Again, it is the 
family of the merchant who dies bankrupt who 
give up their city house in order to find pleasure 
and profit in keeping cows and selling butter 
at a dollar a pound — in the book. I have quite 
a collection of books written by enthusiasts 
upon country life, and I know some persons 
who have acted upon the suggestions given, 
sometimes with very unfortunate results. But 
invariably this country life is considered as an 
asylum. So long as a man can live in the city 
and pay his notes and buy dresses for the 
family, it is not for him to think of trying 
the country. The man who falls behind in the 
race is advised to retreat to the country and 
take to strawberry raising. 

I contend that the strawberry raising or 
whatever out-door work is chosen as a means 
for making a livelihood should be preferred, 



246 The Dangers of Cutting Loose 

taken all in all, to the city life even if this city 
life is fairly successful in a commercial sense, 
and I hold this for the simple reason that it 
offers emancipation from some of the worst of 
city evils, while its drawbacks — and there are 
drawbacks — are insignificant as compared to 
the advantages gained. Take half a dozen of 
the most successful city men you know and 
consider: (i) How much healthy exercise in the 
sunshine they have; (2) How much of their 
life is passed with their children and family ; 
(3) How much intellectual exercise do they get 
out of life, how many books worth reading do 
they open in the course of the year? 

In olden times, and in fact in recent times 
until the power press and cheap postage ap- 
peared, the dweller in the country was largely 
cut off from intellectual intercourse. He had 
his few books, as a rule costly and therefore 
few, and that was all. To-day, no matter how 
distant the hamlet, the mail reaches it, and for 
a trifle the newspapers and magazines bring him 
the best thoughts of the world together with a 
record of what men who like the fuss and the 
noise of towns are doing. It is no longer 



From Town Drudgery 247 

necessary to live with the throng in order to 
know what is going on where crowds meet, and 
all signs go to show that in the future it will be 
still less necessary. The phonograph, to speak 
of but one wonder of the near future, offers 
extraordinary things to the man who wants to 
get away from the crowd. The perfected 
phonograph, and there can be no reasonable 
doubt as to its future perfection, whether this 
is achieved a year or twenty years hence, will 
not only give us books at a cost insignificant as 
compared to that of ink and paper, but in a 
far pleasanter form ; it will be a pleasant reader 
always ready to read by the hour or the day. 
Not only this, but it will give us music of any 
kind — the latest song or the newest orchestral 
symphony in a manner to be enjoyed even by 
experts. So much has been accomplished with 
the phonograph that nothing seems to be too 
extraordinary to claim for it. It is no dream 
to say that as a means of communicating 
thoughts and words, the phonograph will do 
more for the world as an educator than print- 
ing. In the future, authors will not write their 
books — they will read them, and phonographic 



248 The Dangers of Cutting Loose 

copies of the result will be so cheap that our 
books of to-day will seem extravagantly dear 
in comparison. With music it will be the same 
thing, only that the phonograph will do in this 
field what it has never been possible to do be- 
fore. To provide for the intellectual food of 
man was formerly more difficult than to pro- 
vide for his physical sustenance. To-day it 
is the other way. In the future, thanks to 
electricity, that great power of coming ages by 
which the forces of nature are to be harnessed, 
food and clothing and everything that ma- 
chinery can make will be inconceivably cheap. 
Some thinkers believe that even by the year 
2000 one hour's work a day will suffice to give 
a man more comforts and luxuries than he now 
earns by eight or ten hours' work. It will be 
argued, of course, that what man considers his 
necessaries will grow faster than his means for 
supplying them : in those favored days to come 
the day laborer will deem himself unfortunate 
if he cannot dwell in marble halls and eat off 
gold plate. Nevertheless there.is a point when 
we can say that a man is well sheltered from 
the elements, well clothed, well fed ; intellectual 



From Town Drudgery 249 

food in the shape of books and newspapers will 
then be so cheap as to be scarcely worth con- 
sidering. It is probable that in those days 
people will not herd together at the sacrifice of 
sunshine and quiet. 

The workman of to-day earns by his day's 
labor twice as much food and four times as 
much manufactured goods — clothes, tools, fur- 
niture — as his father did in the same time. 
When we come to books and newspapers the 
contrast is more astonishing. The average 
mechanic can now buy for one day's work 
more books than a month's work would have 
brought him a century ago, or a year's work 
would have brought him in the Middle Ages. 
More than that, thanks to cheap postage and 
circulating libraries, books are to be had almost 
for the asking. One of the things that the 
Government could do for the intellectual 
growth of the country would be to make the 
postage upon books almost nominal. This is 
done in the case of newspapers, which are sent 
through the nxails to subscribers for one cent a 
pound ; but in the case of books, postage is 
still exorbitant. 



250 The Dangers of Cutting Loose 

That there are certain deprivations in living 
in the country, especially in isolation, goes 
without saying. First and chief my critics 
are pretty certain to note the absence of all 
society, certainly a loss if one's position in 
city life is such as to give him the society of 
cultured people and the time to enjoy such 
society. Nor is the raising of cabbages or 
strawberries for market by any means a life 
of luxurious idleness. Even where, as in my 
case, the object is not to earn money, but to 
save it, there are early hours, soiled hands, and 
a tired back ; some of my friends to whom I 
have expounded the gospel of idleness — as they 
call it, although I see nothing of idleness in the 
raising of cabbages and strawberries — say that 
just in proportion to my success as a straw- 
berry grower will be my loss in other direc- 
tions. They say that a day of hard physical 
labor in the fields will not end with the reading 
of a good book or magazine article, but in doz- 
ing off at eight o'clock. Farmers must keep 
farmers' hours. I have made some experiments 
in this field. I have found that whether or not 
we go to bed at nine o'clock depends wholly 



From Town Drudgery 251 

upon whether we accustom ourselves to going 
to bed at that hour. It may require at first 
some exertion and many yawns to get through 
a certain book or an article, especially if it is a 
stupid one, before going to bed. But it will 
get easier and easier until the day will not seem 
to be properly wound up without the two 
hours' reading. The family circle in which 
reading aloud is not one of the customary 
evening employments misses one of the great 
enjoyments of life as well as a potent means 
of educating the children. The boy or girl 
who learns to know and love the best books of 
Thackeray, Scott, and Dickens is pretty sure 
to have an interest in good reading through 
life. But the habit of reading for an hour 
every evening and perhaps devoting half an 
hour to some standard work not a novel, is not 
to be cultivated without some effort, and some 
sacrifice in other directions. ^One of the most 
valuable gifts of a liberal education is the ability 
to find an interest in books. Unfortunately, 
but very few people know how to read. The 
great number have never learned when young; 
when in middle life their time has been too 



252 The Dangers of Cutting Loose 

much taken up with money-making; when the 
money was made and there was plenty of 
time, the faculty of finding interest in things 
above every-day detail had died for want of 
cultivation. 



THE END 




Our European Neighbours 

Edited by WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON 

12°. Illustrated. Each, net $1.20 
By Mail 1.30 

I.— FRENCH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By Hannah Lynch. 

"Miss Lynch 's pages are thoroughly interesting and suggestive. 
Her style, too, is not common. It is marked by vivacity without 
any drawback of looseness, and resembles a stream that runs 
strongly and evenly between walls. It is at once distinguished and 
useful. . . . Her five-page description (not dramatization) of the 
grasping- Paris landlady is a capital piece of work. . . . Such 
well finished portraits are frequent in Miss Lynch's book, which is 
small, inexpensive, and of a real ejccellence."— The LondonAcademy. 
" Miss Lynch's book is particularly notable. It is the first of a 
series describing the home and social life of various European 
peoples — a series long needed and sure to receive a warm welcome. 
Her style is frank, vivacious, entertaining, captivating, just the 
kind for a book which is not at all statistical, political, or contro- 
versial. A special excellence of her book, reminding one of Mr. 
Whiteing's, lies in her continual contrast of the English and the 
French, and she thus sums up her praises: 'The English art 
admirable : the French are lovable.' "—The Outlook. 

II GERMAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By W. H. Dawson, author of " Germany and the 
Germans," etc. 

"The book is as full of correct, impartial, well-digested, and 
well-presented information as an egg is of meat. One can only 
recommend it heartily and without reserve to all who wish to gain 
an insight into German life. It worthily presents a great nation, 
now the greatest and strongest in Europe. " — Commercial Advertiser. 

Ill RUSSIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By Francis H. E. Palmer, sometime Secretary to 
H. H. Prince Droutskop-Loubetsky (Equerry to 
H. M. the Emperor of Russia). 

" We would recommend this above all other works of its charac- 
ter to those seeking a clear general understanding of Russian life, 
character, and conditions, but who have not the leisure or inclina- 
tion to read more voluminous tomes. ... It cannot be too highly 
recommended, for it conveys practically all that well-informed 
people should know of 'Our European Neighbours.' "—Mail and 
Express. 



Our European Neighbours 



IV.— DUTCH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By P. M. Hough, B.A. 

Not alone for its historic past is Holland interesting, but also 
for the paradox which it presents to-day. It is difiBcult to reconcile 
the old-world methods seen all over the country with the advanced 
ideas expressed in conversation, in books, and in newspapers. Mr. 
Hough's long residence in the country has enabled him to present 
a trustworthy picture of Dutch social life and customs in the seven 
provinces, — the inhabitants of which, while diverse in race, dialect, 
and religion, are one in their love of liberty and patriotic devotion. 

" Holland is always interesting, in any line of study. In this 
work its charm is carefully preserved. The sturdy toil of the people, 
their quaint characteristics, their conservative retention of old dress 
aud customs, their quiet abstention from taking part in the great 
affairs of the world are clearly reflected in this faithful mirror. The 
illustrations are of a high grade of photographic reproductions." — 
IVashingion Post. 

v.— SWISS LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By Alfred T. Story, author of the " Building of 
the British Empire," etc. 

" We do not know a single compact book on the same subject 
in which Swiss character in all its variety finds so sympathetic and 
yet thorough treatment ; the reason of this being that the author 
has enjoyed privileges of unusual intimacy with all classes, which 
prevented his lumping the people as a whole without distinction 
of racial and cantonal feeling." — Nation. 

"There is no phase of the lives of these sturdy republicans, 
whether social or political, which Mr. Story does not touch upon ; 
and an abundance of illustrations drawn from unhackneyed sub- 
jects adds to the value of the book.." —Chicago Dial. 

VI.— SPANISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By L. HiGGiN. 

The new volume in the fascinating series entitled ' ' Our Euro- 
pean Neighbours " ought to be of special interest to Americans, as 
it describes faithfully, and at the same time in a picturesque stvle, 
the social life of a people who have been much maligned by the 
casual globe-trotter. Spain has sunk from the proud position which 
she held during the Middle Ages, but much of the force and energy 
which charged the old-time Spaniard still remains, and there is to- 
day a determined upward movement out of the abyss into whidl 
despotism and bigotry had plunged her. 



Our European Neighbours 



VII.— ITALIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By LUIGI ViLLAKI. 

The author, who is a son of Professor Villari of London, take-; 
the point of view required by this series, i.e., he looks on Italy with 
the eyes of an Englishman, and yet he has all the advantage of 
Italian blood to aid him in his sympathy with every detail of his 
subject. 

" A most interesting and instructive volume, which presents 
an intimate view of the social habits and manner of thought of the 
people of which it treats."— ^w^a/o Express. 

"A book full of information, comprehensive and accurate. Its 
numerous attractive illustrations add to its interest and value. We 
are glad to welcome such an addition to an excellent series."— 
Syracuse Herald. 

VIII.— DANISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By Jessie H. Brochner. 

"Miss Brochner has written an interesting book on a fascinat- 
ing subject, a book which should arouse an interest in Denmark in 
those who have not been there, and which can make those who 
know and are attracted by the country very homesick to return." 
—Commercial Advertiser. 

IX.— AUSTRO-HUNQARIAN LIFE IN TOWN AND 
COUNTRY 

By Francis H. E. Palmer, author of " Russian 
Life in Town and Country," etc. 

Austria-Hungary is interesting not only as "the meeting place of 
long-past ages and modern times," but also as the land of a strange 
assemblage of races. Among these numerous peoples, differing in 
language, religfion, and habits of life, there exists a mutual anti- 
pathy and jealousy. All the phases of this life— industrial, social, 
literary, and religious— are adequately considered by Mr. Palmer. 

X.— TURKISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY 

By L. M. J. Garnett. 



Q. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
New York and London 



Old Paths and Legends 
of New England : : : : 

With many Illustrations of Massachu- 
setts Bay, Old Colony, Rhode Island, 
and the Providence Plantations, and the 
Fresh River of the Connecticut Valley 

By Katherine M. Abbott 

8° , ve7j fully illustrated, net, $ 

THE idea for this book grew out of the fact that 
Miss Abbott's little paper-bound Trolley Trips, 
describing the old New England neighborhoods 
that may now be reached by the trolley, have met with 
an astonishingly wide demand. In this more pretentious 
work Miss Abbott has utilized her fund of material to 
draw a delightful picture of the quaint byways of New 
England. But in this case her wanderings are not lim- 
ited by gaps in the trolley circuit, or by daylight or car- 
fares. Historic spots of national interest, curious or 
charming out-of-the-way places, Indian legends and 
Yankee folk-lore find full justice in Miss Abbott's enter- 
taining pages. Fiction could never interpret New 
England so honestly as does this volume. 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

New York London 



